


The Magpie's Song (Mama, I'm Coming Home)

by ruebellab



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Dream Sharing, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, F/M, Future Fic, Introspection, Magic, Post-Quiet Isle, Queen in the North, Wildlings - Freeform, Wish Fulfillment
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-03
Updated: 2018-04-15
Packaged: 2018-12-10 11:14:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 35,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11690469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruebellab/pseuds/ruebellab
Summary: There’s not a soul out here save for himself and the dead men in the ground, and Sandor looks up at the bird over his head - the only possible cause of the song.He supposes, for half a second that he could be imagining it. He had just been thinking of her, and of that memory in particular - the night she sang to him while the world had burned green and terrible.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> times have changed and times are strange  
> here i come, but i ain't the same  
> mama, i'm coming home  
> times gone by seems to be  
> you could have been a better friend to me  
> mama, i'm coming home
> 
> (mama, i'm coming home - ozzy osbourne)
> 
>  
> 
> **for those concerned sansa is of age now
> 
>  
> 
> dedicated to my amazing fic-doula ThatTopApple <3  
> and special thanks to swiftsnowmane <3

There’s a bird in the bare tree on the hill over looking the newest row of graves.  
  
He can’t be sure how long it’s been there, three days, maybe four, but if he had to guess, he would say it came the same day that he heard Sansa Stark was back in Winterfell.  
  
The news had come from a stranger who had told the ferryman, who had told Brother Croydon who had told the Elder Brother, who had brought the news straight to Sandor, a knowing sort of smile on his old lined face.  
  
“The Starks hold Winterfell once more,” he had said, and then waited expectantly. “Lady Sansa at their head, they call her Mother in the North.”  
  
At that moment, Sandor had been chest deep in an open grave.  
  
He had tossed another spadeful of silty earth over his shoulder narrowly missing the old man who stood at the foot of the hole.  
  
“The north is a long way from here, Brother,” Sandor had said, without looking at him.  
  
“A month perhaps, on foot,” Elder Brother said. “Quicker if you take a horse.”  
  
“I will need no horse.”  
  
“Your leg is stiff, a journey like that could make you lame.”  
  
Sandor had glared up at him then, stabbing his spade hard into the dirt  
  
“True,” he had said calmly, “but there is no journey to be made.”  
  
Elder Brother had smiled again and then nodded as one might do to a fanciful child.  
  
“Of course,” he said, and he had tucked his hands away under his robes and left Sandor to his digging.  
  
The hole was finished that afternoon, and Sandor had considered briefly laying down in it himself.  
  
So she was at home.  
  
The little bird.  
  
His gut had clenched and curled at the thought of her. Sweet innocence and raw pain - he had been drawn to her enduring hope, mesmerized by her flourishing beauty, compelled to protect her, and obsessed with the need to show her the truth.  
  
So the old man thought him a fool.  
  
Sandor had spoken of her often.  
  
Hells, when the Brown Brothers had found him and brought him here, he had called for her as he had lain feverish and delirious, and later, months later when he had found within himself those darkest corners of regret and shame, he had weeped over her too.  
  
Elder Brother had seen it all, and if he thought Sandor a fool, he wasn’t wrong.  
  
It was years ago now.  
  
Sandor had lived with the brothers for years, and since then, the war and the country had changed just as much as he himself had too.  
  
The fires of rage that had once burned bright inside his mind, fuelling his foul mouth and feeding his pain were long since dulled.  
He was still a passionate man, with a body made to fight and a mind made to win, but he was no longer consumed by pain and fury.  
  
The Hound was dead, and in that death, Sandor had found his peace.  
  
And just because this news had come - just because somewhere inside of him had leapt to attention at the sound of her name and all but demanded he hoist himself from that grave and start northward at once, didn’t mean that was the right thing to do.  
  
He had been no good for her then and whether or not he was at peace, Sandor was certain, he was no good for her now either.  
  
So he had done nothing.  
  
He had dug and dug that day until his arms had ached and sweat dripped from his brow and he had not stopped until sundown.  
  
And in the next five days he had carried on much the same.  
  
Only he hadn’t been alone.  
  
No, sometime time on the third day he had noticed the bird. It had swooped down out of the sky to land in the bare branches of an old crooked hawthorn on the hilltop.  
  
With the last of a fresh line of graves dug, gaping like open mouths in the earth waiting to be fed, Sandor allows himself a rest - the first proper rest he’s had since the Elder Brother had come to him on this hill five days ago.  
  
Certainly he had slept each night - collapsed onto his pallet after taking his meal, asleep before the Brothers had finished their prayers, but other than that, he has not allowed himself to stop.  
  
With the steady sound of the shovel slicing through the dirt, the grunt of his own breath as he heaves it out of the hole, the heavy pat as it falls into the growing mound that will cover the body, he can keep his thoughts away from her.  
  
And now, as he gives in and settles himself against the base of the tree, drinking from a skin of cool water and staring out at the sea, he can no longer help it.  
  
It had been altogether shameful the way he had left her - what he had almost done, and the memory makes him sick.  
  
Still, as he remembers her, the glow of green light illuminating her pale, perfect skin, the way she had trembled beneath him in fear, he cannot help but think her beautiful.  
  
What must she be now, he wonders, with a few years on her face and a young woman’s body. She had already been smarter than he - wiser somehow, through all of her ignorance, what was she now with a few years experience behind her?  
  
And they call her mother - not queen, but Mother in the North.  
  
His lip twitches into something like a smile as he thinks of her.  
  
No doubt they love her, he decides.  
  
There’s a sound then - a few notes clear and sweet and it causes him to still sharply, eyes suddenly keen, searching for the source.  
  
_gen-tle-mo-ther_  
  
There’s not a soul out here save for himself, and the dead men in the ground and Sandor looks up at the bird over his head - the only possible cause of the song.  
  
He supposes, for half a second that he could be imagining it. He had just been thinking of her, and of that memory in particular - the night she sang to him while the world had burned green and terrible.  
  
It’s a magpie, he notes, kin to crows and ravens, and clever too - but clever enough to learn to whistle a tune?  
  
He waits a while, beneath the tree, splashing a little of the water from the skin over his face and down the back of his neck.  
  
The bird is silent.  
  
The next day though - six days since the news came to the Quiet Isle of Sansa Stark’s return to Winterfell, Sandor hears it again.  
  
_gen-tle-mo-ther_  
  
And again.  
  
_gen-tle-mo-ther_  
  
That morning, Brother Simm and Brother Drury had brought the first of the bodies up the hill, and after they had prayed for it’s long departed soul, they had lowered it into the hole, leaving Sandor to the business of covering it over.  
  
The occupied grave is about half full when the magpie starts up again.  
  
_gen-tle-mo-ther_  
  
It whistles, and this time he looks up to watch it’s beak open as it sings the notes.  
  
He pauses a moment - just long enough to wonder if he’s become a madman as well as a fool - before he whistles back to it, not the same notes, but the next part of the song.  
  
_font-of-mer-cy_  
  
The magpie fluffs its feathers at this, pacing on the bare branch.  
  
_gen-tle-mo-ther_  
  
Sandor whistles back.  
  
_font-of-mer-cy_  
  
The magpie gives a little caw and takes flight.  
  
He watches it go, keeping his eyes on the bird until it becomes a little speck of black in the sky and disappears altogether.  
  
He’s hardly one for fits of fancy, and yes, he likes a good story not and then, but it's one for the books.  
  
A pretty talking bird - he thinks, his mouth almost forming into a smile, not often you come across one of those.  
  
-  
  
He sees the bird the next day.  
  
It comes to him, not on the hillside, but to his bunk, flying through the open window and settling on the wooden sill.  
  
Sandor is standing at the wash basin in nothing but boots and breeches, soap on his face and hands, and when he’s finished with washing, he goes to find a clean tunic.  
  
The magpie, it seems is rather excitable this morning, and instead of the notes coming slow and sweet as they had done the days before, the tune is clipped and impatient.  
  
_gen-tle-mo-ther-gen-tle-mo-ther-gen-tle-mo-ther_  
  
“Alright, alright,” Sandor says, pulling the tunic over his head and coming to the window.  
  
There’s something shining in the bird’s beak and as he approaches, it drops the treasure on the windowsill.  
  
Sandor grunts a laugh.  
  
“Now where did you get this?” He says, picking up a fat golden dragon.  
  
The magpie chirps, impatient again, it’s sharp black claws tap tapping on the wood.  
  
“Is it for me?”  
  
_gen-tle-mo-ther_  
  
The bird whistles, flapping from the windowsill to the small trunk at the foot of his sleeping pallet.  
  
Sandor follows it, flipping back the lid to stow the coin away near the bottom of his meagre belongings.  
  
“I still won’t go,” he tells it - he means it.  
  
He has no business going north. He has nothing to offer her - nothing but a body that’s seen far better days, a pair of calloused hands, and no sword to hold within them.  
  
His mind may be in the finest shape of his life, his heart too - open and willing to give and receive in equal measure, perhaps for the first time ever, but what good would that do her?  
  
The magpie takes off again, leaving through the open window the way it came.  
  
Over the next few days, it returns, both to the windowsill in Sandor’s bunk and to the old hawthorn on the hilltop where he works.  
  
Each time there is something new in it’s beak.  
  
A bright blue ribbon, a silver needle, the red leaf of a weirwood, an ivory bone, a downy grey feather, a torn corner of parchment bearing a curling letter S, and coins too - copper stars and silver stags and another golden dragon.  
  
He starts giving it favour in return too - a drink of fresh water from his cupped palm, a few bites of meat, a crumble of bread.  
  
The bird still whistles, and he whistles to it right back, taking each of the items as they come and stowing them away in the deep pockets of his robes, on into the bottom of his trunk.  
  
He can see plain as the sun in the sky what the bird is getting at.  
  
The blue and grey - Stark colours, the weirwood of the old gods in the North, the letter S, the tune it whistles over and over in his ear so that not thinking of Sansa Stark has now become near impossible.  
  
He’s not sure what the other objects mean - the bone or the needle, whether they’re just little treasures that caught the magpie’s eye or something more, but he knows what the coin is for, and so, eleven days after the news of Sansa’s seat in Winterfell came to the Quiet Isle, Sandor counts his store.  
  
There’s not enough to get him a sword, or a scrap of decent armour for that matter, but there’s enough to make a good start.  
  
“So that’s the way of it, then” he says to the magpie as it drops another copper into his palm, along with a piece of sea glass so smooth it looks like melting ice. In return, he offers the bird a little corner of his bread and it accepts, cawing it’s approval.  
  
Sandor isn’t one for signs and omens, gods or demons, but this - this one is painfully clear, even to a man like him.  
  
Go north. Go to Winterfell. Go to her.  
  
The time has come.  
  
-  
  
They call his horse Driftwood now.  
  
He’s still in as fine as shape as ever - perhaps better now that he, like Sandor is gentler now, and isn’t driven solely by the need to maim and kill.  
  
He has his saddle bag packed and prepared early on the morning he plans to depart and he makes only one stop before leaving for the ferry.  
  
He goes to the Elder Brother - not for his blessing, nor for his advice, but for nothing more than to pay the old man his respects, give him his sincere thanks for finding something deep within him worthy of saving.  
  
Without him, Sandor would still be dead in more ways than one.  
  
The old man doesn’t laugh at him, but he wears that knowing smile again as though he has been expecting this.  
  
“I’m afraid I haven’t much to offer as a parting gift,” Elder Brother muses, his brow wrinkling in thought. “Come with me.”  
  
He leads Sandor from his chambers to one of the outbuildings.  
  
“Brother Melling, have we a spare axe?”  
  
The young Brother produces one, small and light, but sharpened to perfection.  
  
“It’s meant for wood of course,” Elder Brother says, handing it to Sandor, “but I have no doubt it could have other uses if need be.”  
  
“I can think of some,” Sandor agrees.  
  
He had never trained much with a battle axe, and this one - significantly smaller and lighter would be little use against a sword and armour, but Sandor knows himself - any blade in his hand can be a deadly one.  
  
With his knife in one hand - one of the few possessions he does have, and the axe in the other, he knows it will be enough to see him through.  
  
He had traded a little of the coin the magpie had brought him for extra provisions from the kitchen, packed a bedroll and his water skin, and even with a few other small items, he has barely enough to fill a saddle bag.  
  
When he thanks him, Elder Brother accepts Sandor’s gratitude with grace.  
  
“I hope you make the very most of the life ahead of you,” he says.  
  
“I will try, and I ask for nothing more than that,’ Sandor tells him as the old man takes his hands in his own.  
  
“Humble aspirations,” Elder Brother nods, and then smiles at Sandor again, “but do not sell yourself short, you still have many good years left, to serve, to fight - you could be a father still.”  
  
Sandor feels his belly drop to somewhere about the region of his boots and he looks at him gravely.  
  
Elder Brother chuckles, clapping Sandor on the shoulder with a gnarled hand.  
  
“Take heart, I wish you only a good, full life,” he says, “journey safely.”  
  
Sandor leaves soon thereafter.  
  
Driftwood makes only the slightest fuss at the sight of the ferry, and they cross with nothing more than a nod from the ferryman.  
  
Not long after that, headed northward on a path well removed from the king’s road, the magpie joins them.  
  
He’s no expert on birds, but the damn thing can’t seem to contain its excitement.  
  
It swoops and dives in the air, nattering and cawing at him, whistling over and over the mother’s hymn.  
  
_gen-tle-mo-ther-gen-tle-mo-ther-gen-tle-mo-ther_  
  
_font-of-mer-cy_  
  
Sandor whistles back.  
  
After the years he has spent hidden away on the Quiet Isle, the rest of the world has changed.  
  
It’s no longer quite the desolate hell he had travelled through with the little Stark girl.  
  
It is healing, just as the people are, just as he had done.  
  
The Brown Brothers had found him, the Elder Brother had healed him - brought him back to life, but she - Sansa, she is something worth living for.  
  
He rides for hours at a steady pace.  
  
With his stiff leg, it will take longer than he would like and he will have to stop more often to stretch himself, to walk alongside the horse to ensure he doesn’t turn to stone on the saddle.  
  
Still, the first day passes quickly enough, and the second too.  
  
The magpie flies a little ways ahead of the horse, sometimes resting on the reigns, or on the saddle or even, on Sandor’s shoulder as though he were a filthy mummer with a trained pet.  
  
On the third day though, it disappears.  
  
Sandor is just beginning to wonder if he’ll see the bird again - if it’s finished with him and flown off for good, when he catches sight of it, in a tree at a fork in the road.  
  
He pulls on the reins, bringing Driftwood to a stop and laughs to himself.  
  
“Which way then,” he asks the bird, not because he’s relying on it, not because he can’t make up his own mind, but because it feels like the right thing to do.  
  
It has brought him this far.  
  
The magpie takes off down the righthand path and Sandor follows it.  
  
After nine days - he’s been keeping track, a line cut into a smooth stick every night before he goes to sleep, he’s barely seen a soul.  
  
He’s stopped a few times for provisions, for a wash and to water his horse, and he’s spoken to a few of the smallfolk but only out of utmost necessity.  
  
It could be luck, he thinks - good fortune, or it could be the bird, steering him away from trouble and towards a clear path.  
  
And after just over a fortnight, he reaches the twins.  
  
He keeps his hood up and his head down, and though he’s running near on empty, hasn’t had much rest or much food in days, he’s wary to stop.  
  
Somehow, the magpie seems to know this.  
  
It still brings him trinkets, sometimes coin, sometimes junk, sometimes little reminders of the North and the woman who rules there.  
  
It has been his guide and Sandor is grateful for it - it has never yet led him astray.  
  
Not until now, he thinks, rounding a bend in the road.  
  
There’s a cart in the distance, a small wooden thing, simple and sturdy, pulled by a donkey who looks about as old as the driver - an ancient woman who waves him down with her handkerchief, begging him to stop.  
  
He can see the problem straight away. One of the wheels has come away from the axle and it’s lying in the mud a short distance from the cart.  
  
Sandor thinks of refusing her, of passing without word - that would be the safest thing to do, and just as he digs his heels into Driftwood’s side, encouraging the horse to pass quickly, the magpie dives at him, circling his head before landing on the detached cartwheel.  
  
He grinds his teeth, huffing a breath through his nostrils.  
  
He pulls back, slowing his horse and coming to stop at the woman’s side.  
  
“Please, brother” she says, “please help me.”  
  
And so he does.  
  
It’s not difficult work, simply a matter of lifting the wheel back into place and securing the hub, and within minutes Sandor has the cart repaired.  
  
He doesn’t say a word to the woman, even when he’s done and she’s near weeping in thanks, and when he makes to return to his horse, she stops him, tugging on the sleeve of his robes.  
  
“Brother," she calls him, and it takes him a moment to remember that over his tunic, he still wears the brown robes of a proctor. “Let me repay your kindness.”  
  
Sandor stills at this, his brow knit, and waits.  
  
“I haven’t much to give, but I can make you a meal - and give you room to sleep at my hearth.”  
  
He recoils at the thought of sleeping by the fire, but a proper meal - by the gods that is something he could use.  
  
“Fair,” he nods, “I accept.”  
  
The woman neatens the back of her cart, righting the items that had spilled when the wheel had come loose, and with some difficulty, she raises herself into the driver’s seat.  
  
She leads the way back to a little stone cottage by a creek, all the while talking to him, asking questions, paying no mind to the grunts he gives in answer.  
  
He barely says a word to her, and so - because he suspects out here, she can’t have much company day to day, she begins to tell him stories.  
  
First she tells him of the fall of the twins, something she never thought to see in her day, then she tells him of her grandson’s death, the spring before, and then, as she stokes a great fire, offering Sandor a skin of watered beer, she tells him about the Mother in the North.  
  
He chokes down the mouthful of beer - it smells hardly better than horses piss but that’s not why.  
  
“Lady stark, they call her mother now, gentle mother in the north,” the woman says, “better words for her I couldn’t think of.”  
  
She crosses the room to take a ladle from a peg on the wall.  
  
“She takes them all, see, just as they are, and they love her for it. They say any man can find his salvation so long as he swears himself to her,” she tells him, “gentle but firm - and she has the respect of the free people and the dragon queen too.”  
  
Sandor hardly knows what to think of this.  
  
And he wonders for a moment if he might truly be imagining things.  
  
Perhaps he’s imagined the whole lot of it - perhaps he’s still dying at the foot of that tree, Sansa’s pretty face, flashing before his eyes.  
  
"Any man," he dares to ask.  
  
"Any man, no matter what he's done," the woman nods.  
  
She hands him a bowl of thick stew and they eat in silence. She gives him another, and another after that one, and when he's finished, he makes his camp under her roof, though a good distance from the hearth.  
  
In the morning when he wakes, she offers him a stick of salted meat, a hunk of bread, and his own water skin, now full from the creek.  
  
“Good luck to you," she says as he mounts his horse. "Ride hard and you'll see Winterfell in a week."  
  
-


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you took me in and you drove me out  
> yeah, you had me hypnotized  
> lost and found and turned around  
> by the fire in your eyes
> 
> (mama, i'm coming home - ozzy osbourne)

It takes a little longer than that.

 

The journey has brought out the worst in his leg, and it pains him more than he'd like to admit, making it difficult to sleep comfortably on the hard ground.

 

Since the day the Elder Brother had proclaimed him fit to stand, he had made full effort to see that his body was kept in fine fighting shape. He is still strong, still fit, still dangerous, but even so, he's not quite as good as he once was.

 

He is tested, four days after leaving the old woman's cottage near the Twins, by three young bandits on the road.

 

Sandor had slept quite poorly the night before, and while he could push through his fatigue, his body - his damned leg had rebelled.

 

What an easy target he must have looked.

 

Even at his size - three against an unarmed Brown Brother with a bad leg.

 

He had been walking the horse when they had come out of the trees to flank him on either side of the path.

 

The fools carried only one true sword between the lot of them, not that the man who held it had any idea how to use it properly - it was stolen by the looks of it and not that long ago either.

 

His companions were better with their blades, two short knives, sharp and rusty and Sandor had taken those first, along with a few of their fingers, and an eye.

 

The third man had rushed at Sandor with his sword, and with a blow across the belly with his knife that had stained the road red and one to the back of the man’s head with his axe, he had fallen like a reed in the wind.

 

It was as easy as breathing.

 

And when it’s done - the whole of it having taken mere minutes, he stands there, head spinning, nose full of the familiar stench of blood and fresh death.

 

As easy as breathing.

 

Sandor stands in shock, staring down at what’s left of the three bandits on the ground.

 

It’s not that this is the first time in nearly four years that he’s killed a man, not the sight of the bodies - he’s seen plenty worse countless times before, no, he is in awe at himself.

 

He had barely felt the pain in his leg, it had hardly slowed him down, if at all, and that meant one thing.

 

He still had something to offer her. - he could still keep her safe.

 

Just as he thinks of it, the muscle of his thigh gives an angry twinge as though it hears his thoughts, but he ignores it, dropping heavily to his knees next to the fallen man and reaches for the sword.

 

Stolen, he thinks decisively, taking it up in his hands to inspect the blade.

 

It isn’t of great quality, but it is sharp and it is better than an axe, even if the Elder Brother’s gift had helped him put three men down in a matter of minutes.

 

The magpie comes then, landing on the chest of the man whose eye Sandor had taken.

 

gen-tle-mo-ther

 

It hops over the body, up to stand on the man’s face, it’s little clawed feet digging into the fleshy cheek.

 

gen-tle-mo-ther

 

It whistles as it pecks it’s beak deep into the eye socket, gulping down a mouthful of jelly.

 

“Don’t,” he says harshly.

 

The bird caws at him, turning it head to look at him with one beady black eye.

 

He had been a soldier many years, he has seen this before too, rats and crows and scavengers, ripping a man’s flesh to shreds, freshly dead and fetid alike and Sandor could care less if the bird pecks the man to pieces right before his very eyes, just so long as it doesn’t sing while it does.

 

That memory - that song, that soft little tendril of hope that reaches through him and shines into his darkest corners, pushing him onward, it doesn’t belong here.

 

She doesn’t belong here amongst death and gore.

 

gen-tle-mo-ther-gen-tle-mo-ther

 

It whistles again, cocking its head as though waiting for his reply.

 

“Don’t,” he snarls and the magpie startles, “don’t do that.”

 

gen-tle-mo-ther

 

“Get away!”

 

It caws at him, hopping from the dead man’s face to his chest and with a great flap of it’s wings, it takes off.

 

Sandor watches it disappear into the trees, a sudden and rather ominous silence falling through the forest.

 

He knows - somehow, he knows he won’t see the bird again.

 

And he doesn’t.

 

-

 

He carries on, out of the Riverlands and into the North.

 

He makes his way through the neck past Moat Cailin, where he’s ambushed by another two men on the road, and they put a poorly aimed arrow through his shoulder.

 

Sandor kills them both with the blade he had taken at the Twins.

 

The injury to his shoulder is minor. It hardly bleeds as he works the arrowhead from the flesh of his arm, and he flushes the shallow gouge with water from his skin, wrapping it with a thin strip of cloth.

 

It hurts, certainly, but it’s more of an inconvenience than anything.

 

It’s nothing he can’t ignore - not when he’s so close now, only days away from journey’s end.

 

One of the dead men is tall and broad. Nothing like Sandor of course, but big enough that the mail he strips from the body looks as though it will be a near enough fit.

 

And after he’s found a creek, an hour north of where he’d left the man slain, and washed his blood from the mail, he finds it suits him well enough.

 

He waters the horse, refills the drinking skin and cleans his hands and face too, and when both he and Driftwood are satisfied, Sandor leads the horse back up the muddy bank to the road.

 

He pauses then, still out of sight within the trees - he can hear something, the sound of men’s voices, shouting, arguing.

 

He slings the horse’s reins loosely around the low branch of a nearby tree and draws his blade, creeping silently through the woods until he’s within sight of the road.

 

There’s something of a fracas, four men against one, and Sandor watches as they pull the man from his horse dragging him to the ground.

 

“I’m not him,” he shouts, “I’m not the one you’re looking for.”

 

“Too bad,” says one of the captors, “even if you ain’t him, you’ve still got Bendrig’s best knife, which means he’s dead, and so if they don’t want you - I do.”

 

“I took the knife from a dead man an hour south on the road - I took it but I didn’t kill him.”

 

Another of the men chimes in then, “don’t stop him looking like the man they’re after. Tall, dark knight, scar on his left cheek. We could take him anyway, see if there’s any gold in it.”

 

Sandor feels his stomach drop.

 

There’s no chance it is coincidence - someone is looking for him.

 

His heart begins to race as immediately he thinks of the Saltpans and an imposter who had worn the helm that had once belonged to him a lifetime ago.

 

The Hound was dead, taking with him a thousand wretched deeds, those done by both Sandor himself and by others who had meant him to take the blame, and with his head clear and his heart open, he had left the Quiet Isle a new man - a free man.

 

And yet somehow his past dogged him still.

 

Without hesitating another moment, he’s through the trees and onto the road, and before they’ve even spotted him, two men have fallen.

 

No longer surrounded, the man on the ground springs to his feet, and with Sandor’s help, they take the other two with ease.

 

When all is quiet again, and he’s wiping the blood from his sword, sucking deep lungfuls of air through his nostrils like a spent horse, the man at his side turns to him and laughs in surprise.

 

“By the gods,” he says, his eyes wide, “your face.”

 

Sandor glares at him, rather suddenly missing his life on the Quiet Isle. More than half of the proctors had taken a vow of silence - it has been awhile since he’s taken jabs at his appearance.

 

But then the man is smiling at him.

 

“Come on,” he laughs, walking away from Sandor towards his horse, “I have a razor you can borrow, is there a creek nearby?”

 

As the man goes to rummage in his saddle bag, Sandor runs a hand over his face, his thumb smoothing over the tight scarring on one side and the patches of exposed bone along his jaw, his fingers combing though a few week’s worth of bristles on the other.

 

No wonder the man had laughed.

 

He has half a beard.

 

-

 

It does not last for long though.

 

Sandor accepts the razor, with a nod of thanks, turning his back on the man to return to the creek.

 

With a sliver of soap from his own saddle bag, he washes the blood from his hands for a second time that afternoon and makes quick work of the whiskers on his face.

 

The man joins him, squatting down by the water’s edge to rinse his hands and clean a shallow gash on his forearm.

 

He’s tall, only a few inches shorter than Sandor, and he wears his shaggy dark hair in the Southern style.

 

His armour is simple, boiled leather and mail, and on his left cheek - he bears a old scar, long and thin as though made by the tip of a knife.

 

Sandor wants to laugh at the absurdity of it.

 

It is true, they both fit the description of the wanted man but beyond that, they look nothing alike.

 

Perhaps from a very great distance - in a half light - with one eye shut.

 

This man, Dryden Beck as he calls himself, has the sort of face that would have a pack of highborn maids tittering like squirrels.

 

“Heading northward?” he asks, when Sandor returns the razor and the both of them make their way back towards the road.

 

Sandor nods.

 

“What have you for provisions? I’d be happy to share my wineskin for even a mouthful of meat, for the life of me I cannot catch a thing in these parts - what do you say we make camp together?”

 

Sandor considers this. The idea isn’t overly tempting. he doesn’t trust the man - he doesn’t trust anyone come to think of it, but it’s been near on a fortnight since he’s had news of the North and what awaits him there.

 

And a taste of wine wouldn’t hurt either.

 

“Alright then,” he agrees, and so they do.

 

They ride a ways first, another hour north until it’s time to make their camp and they leave the road, leading the horses through the trees to a small clearing well under the cover of a circle of massive firs.

 

Dryden makes a fire, and once Sandor has found a patch of clover for the horses, he goes deeper still into the wood to hunt.

 

For the last few weeks, he hasn’t bothered - to be sure, his skill lies in tracking prey on two legs rather than four, but he is capable enough and he comes back just as the sun begins to set with two hares.

 

They’re on the thin side, but then so is he - the meat will do him well.

 

Dryden accepts the meal graciously, and as the meat roasts over the flame, he offers Sandor bread and wine.

 

“What shall I call you then, Brother?”

 

Sandor says nothing - he’s wary to share his family name, and even more willing to be rid of it for good.

 

“That will suffice.”

 

“Alright, Brother, if you say so," Dryden laughs, and then he narrows his eyes, looking at Sandor. "You’re not really one of them, are you?”

 

“What difference would it make if I weren’t?”

 

“None, it is a good disguise though - for a wanted man,” Dryden smiles at him before biting off a hunk of bread. “I assume it is you, isn’t it? It’s not me they’re after - and how many more of us could there be around here?”

 

Sandor’s mouth twitches, he takes a sip of wine from the skin and passes it to the other man, and reaches for a stick.

 

He draws the seven pointed star in dirt, recites first words for the Mother, then the Father, the Warrior, the Maid, the Smith, the Crone and finally the Stranger, before tossing the stick into the fire.

 

Dryden is quiet a moment, before he smiles again.

 

“I knew it,” he says, “you’re no holy man.”

 

“No?”

 

“No, no Brother would say a prayer for the Stranger.”

 

Sandor laughs.

 

They eat in silence, the meat is plain but good nonetheless, and when the bones are clean and their bellies are slightly less empty than they had been hours before, they sit by the fire, passing the wineskin back and forth.

 

It’s not enough to get him drunk - nowhere near enough, but going on a few years without a proper drink, there’s a pleasant warmth buzzing about his ears that he welcomes all the same.

 

He welcomes too the news the man gives him - of lady Sansa Stark and her gentle hand in the North.

 

“They call her Mother, not queen, and it’s a fine title,’ Dryden says, and Sandor listens raptly, to the same words spoken from another’s mouth. He remembers those weeks ago, the old woman and her cart - her assurance that there would be a place for him in Winterfell no matter what he had left behind.

 

Dryden goes on.

 

“She is well loved by her people, and loves them in return. She is kind they say, but they say too not to cross her, she is clever and wise, that her men are as loyal as they come and twice as fierce, because she takes them just as they are, like a mother would her child.” He pauses then, looking at Sandor in interest, then says, “that's your plan isn’t it, to become hers?”

 

Sandor feels his belly clench at the words.

 

“Something like that,” he agrees, knowing full well he was hers a long time ago. “And you?”

 

“I’m from the Stormlands myself, and never cared much for the cold but my girl - she’s in the North now, and I plan to make her my wife before the year is through,” Dryden says, “I will gladly serve Lady Stark if she will have me.”

 

Sandor grunts, taking another long pull of wine.

 

“Have you a girl of your own?” Dryden asks, hoisting himself off the ground to squat in front of the fire, poking at a glowing log. The wood breaks and falls into the embers sending up a cloud of glittering ash.

 

Sandor grits his teeth and looks away, shielding the left side of his face from the heat of the flame.

 

He takes another sip of wine before handing the skin back to the other man.

 

“Come now, if you’re not truly a Brown Brother I know at least you’re not celibate."

 

“Near enough - I did live with them long enough to learn those prayers.”

 

“Damn,” Dryden laughs, “but you have a girl don’t you - I see it on your face.”

 

“Are you certain? I’d wager there’s not a thing on my face a girl would want to look at.”

 

“Too bad it’s the only one you’ve got,” Dryden says in good nature, and though Sandor glares at him, he doesn’t seem bothered. “What’s her name?”

 

Sandor doesn’t say a word and the other man sighs but carries on all the same.

 

“Her name is Dasha,” he says, and when Sandor looks at him, one dark brow raised, Dryden laughs again. “Just because you won’t talk doesn’t mean I’m going to pass a fine night like this in silence. here,” he thrusts the wine into Sandor’s hand, “finish this and let’s see if you don't spill your guts by the time the fire is out.”

 

Dasha Lydden, Sandor learns, is not just any old girl.

 

“First time I met her she didn’t think much of my tongue and thought to put me back a few pegs,” Dryden says, “so quick with a blade, she’d sliced through the lace on my breeches and had my bollocks blowing in the wind before I’d even drawn my sword.”

 

Sandor snorts a laugh.

 

“I like to think she got a look at the goods and changed her mind right on the spot, but she’s told me since then I’ve had to work for it. Loves me though, through and through, and if Lady Stark will have me, I’ll serve along side her.”

 

“She’s a swordsman?”

 

“And a fine one at that,” Dryden tells him, “the Mother in the North takes her children as they are - if a woman is born with a sword in her hand instead of needle and thread, she is welcome to fight with the men."

 

Sandor is quiet a moment, remembering that day long ago, when he had stood on his lonely hill, watching as the Elder Brother had received a visitor to the isle in search of Sansa stark. He had thought her a man at first, a knight, tall and ugly, but she had spoken in the voice of a highborn lady, if not perhaps a shade deeper.

 

Whoever she was, perhaps she had found Sansa after all - done what he had failed to do and led her home to safety.

 

"You don't have to tell her name," Dryden says, looking at him shrewdly. "But you cannot convince me that she does not exist. A man does not wear that look upon his face for any reason other than love itself."

 

Sandor glares back, drinking deeply.

 

"So what if she does," he says finally, feeling a stab of annoyance at the way the other man smiles. "It makes no difference. She will never have me."

 

He has thought these words countless times before, but this is the first time he has ever spoken them aloud.

 

"Have you told her?"

 

"Told her what?"

 

"That you love her."

 

Sandor laughs, a harsh humourless bark.

 

"I never said that I did - and even if that were the case, I could not, I cannot."

 

"Oh come now, you don’t seem a coward to me, is she dead?”

 

"No," Sandor says, hating the mere thought of it. "No, she lives."

 

"Then there is no reason not to tell her. She may turn you away, but she also may not, you know."

 

Sandor grits his teeth, fingers sinking into the soft leather of the wineskin. He straightens himself, turning to the man, his face hard.

 

"I cannot, she is-"

 

"Unless she's the sodding Mother herself I don't see -" Dryden stops short at the look on Sandor's face.

 

He feels himself blanch and he shifts his gaze to the crackling fire, unwilling to give away any more.

 

"You poor fool," Dryden laughs, clapping Sandor on the shoulder. "Lady Stark - well there you really might have a problem."

 

"If I even dared to say..." Sandor will not use the word love, he cannot, " _that_ , to her, they would take my head where I stand and feed my body to the wolves."

 

"Likely not," Dryden smiles, "your cock though, you'd lose that without question.”

 

-

 

He dreams of her that night.

 

Dreams he is on his knees before her, his head bowed, eyes blinded.

 

"What do you want, Hound?"

 

"I came to serve you."

 

"You came a long way for nothing," she tells him, her voice steel sharp, ice cold.

 

"They told me any man-"

 

"Any man but you."

 

He barely feels the slice of the knife across his throat. It is swift and clean and no more than he deserves.

 

He wakes for a moment then, blinking into the black night, and when sleep finds him again, so does Sansa.

 

"If you love me," she says, this time her voice is light with laughter, and he feels the tug of her hands, small and soft, drawing him onwards. "Come and find me."

 

"I will," he promises. "I will find you.”

 

The ground beneath his feet is a litter of dry red leaves, and each footstep crunches as he follows her deep into the wood.

 

He tracks her every step, catches the whip of her hair as she darts in and out amongst the trees.

 

And yet he loses her somehow.

 

He trips and stumbles over a long gnarled root protruding from the ground, sprawling at the base of an ancient Weirwood.

 

The tree has a face, and it speaks to him with the voice of Eddard Stark.

 

"You told her you would find her."

 

Sandor tries to stand, but the pain in his thigh is excruciating, trapping him prone on the ground.

 

"I will."

 

"You told her you would keep her safe once, too."

 

The mouth of the tree bleeds red and Sandor wakes again.

 

It’s perhaps an hour this time before he goes back to sleep. He gets up, stumbles away from the camp to piss against a tree, and returns to throw himself down onto his bedroll.

 

He's dreaming again within minutes.

 

His hands are full, with a pretty pair of tits  that bounce and sway with each one of his forceful upward thrusts.

 

She smells like lemons, and when he dares bring his mouth to hers, her lips taste like honey.

 

Strange he thinks, as he buries himself so deep in her cunt that she cries out, grasps him hard, her soft hands suddenly sharp like the claws of a small bird - strange that he should know how it feels to fuck and yet a simple kiss is something wild and strange.

 

When she reaches her peak, she cries out for him - his name on every other breath.

 

"Come to me," Sansa says, "please."

 

"I will," he promises, as he takes another sweet kiss.

 

-

 

When Sandor wakes for the third and final time, the sky is white.

 

Snow is coming - a storm by the looks of it, and though Dryden tells him, as they squat next to the fire, warming themselves through until it’s time to stow their things and depart, that they could make it to Winterfell by nightfall, it will be only if the weather holds.

 

“I can ride through snow,” Sandor rasps, not looking at him.

 

“I suspected as much,” the other man says, and he’s silent a moment before he adds, “she never remarried, you know.”

 

Sandor grunts a reply, feigning nonchalance, all the while his insides as much a swirling mass as the sky overhead.

 

“Just thought you might like to know,” Dryden smiles, “in case you woke up feeling particularly courageous.”

 

Sandor gives him a withering look.

 

They pack their bags, douse the fire and find the road within the hour.

 

To be quite honest, Sandor isn’t sure just how he feels.

 

He had woken tight and tense, his bad leg stiff and his body reluctant to move after a long restless night on the hard ground. He had lain there, staring up through the thick boughs of the fir tree where he had set his bedroll and somewhere in the distance, he had heard the deep throated caw of a raven.

 

He was no stranger to nightmares, and it hadn’t been the first time he had dreamt of Sansa either - in pleasure or in pain, but this morning his head feels a jumbled mess.

 

As they ride - in silence mostly, unless it is to signal one another to stop, he works the dreams though in his mind.

 

It was his fear, plain and simple, playing itself out in different scenes, and though it had left him feeling uneasy, in the light of day, Sandor felt no cowardice.

 

Whatever she had waiting for him, be it death or love, whether she would remind him of his failure, reveal his inadequacy, or give him nothing at all, he would accept it.

 

It had not been until he had met Dryden Beck that he dared even think of the word love.

 

The Elder Brother had tried to suggest it more than once, and each time Sandor had stopped him short.

 

He didn’t love her then, he was neither ready to nor knew how, and he doesn’t love her now either - but through years of learning to leave his past behind, learning to let his heart grow open and willing - he knows he could.

 

And that makes all the difference.

 

He could love her fiercely, unbound and unlimited - if she let him.

 

He could love her, her could serve her in silence for the rest of his days, he could also fall at her hand.

 

He will leave it to her to decide.

 

-


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> you made me cry, you told me lies  
> but, I can't stand to say goodbye  
> mama, i'm coming home  
> i could be right, i could be wrong  
> it hurts so bad, it's been so long  
> mama, i'm coming home

It begins to snow just as they mount the rise of a tall hill, fat white flakes that fall wet and heavy, clinging to everything they touch.

Sandor drags a hand through his hair to get a better look at the scene below - if it keeps up like this he’ll be soaked through before long and freezing not long after that.

But it doesn’t matter, he thinks, with something like a smile touching his uneven mouth, from where they stand at the top of the hill, he can see Winterfell.

The castle is a dark mass on the horizon dotted with pinpricks of glittering firelight - an hour, maybe two at the very most, and his journey will be over.

Driftwood stamps his foot and tosses his head. He too seems ready to press on, and so with a look towards Dryden, who nods his assent, they begin to move.

It snows and it snows, and by the time they ride through the little town that sits along the east wall, the ground is a thick white carpet, the buildings iced like gingercake.

Sandor pulls back on the reins just as they draw near the East Gate, taking in a deep steadying breath.

It might have been a month on the road, but it’s truly taken years to get here.

He’s ready now.

-

And yet it’s not quite as easy as all that.

Sandor hadn’t known what to expect upon arriving at the castle.

And though he had thought of it - of marching straight up to the gate and requesting an audience with Lady Stark, he had known it would be foolish to try.

Even now, he still has no solid plan. To say his name could expose him for the wanted man he knows he still is, and to show his face will be no better.

But perhaps if he bows his head and holds his tongue the guards will see nothing but a mild mannered Brown Brother, and next to Dryden Beck’s comely face and easy charm, it may be enough to allow him to pass without question.

He may need no plan after all.

They are met by a guardsman at the gate - an old man, solemn and grey who holds out his torch high into the air as if to better see their faces.

Dryden lowers his hood, calling out to him in greeting and Sandor falls back a few paces, letting the other man take charge.

“My companion and I have come to serve the Lady of Winterfell,” Dryden announces and the guard raises his brow, staring at him in great interest.

“Harrot,” he barks, and a young man at the gate springs into attention, “he’s here!”

“Am I expected?” Dryden asks, puzzled and the guard nods sharply.

“Certainly, your lady forewarned us of your arrival.”

“Well then, take me to her” he says, altogether too pleased with himself, and as the guard called Harrot comes to lead the way, he calls to Sandor from over his shoulder. “Good luck to you, Brother - no doubt we shall see each other again soon. I must be gone, my lady awaits!”

Sandor rolls his eyes - he could quite honestly say that he liked the man, but he cannot help the slight prick of jealousy he feels at the thought of the welcome that Dryden will receive.

The woman he loves is waiting for him, and she will take him into her home, into her arms and assuredly into her bed - it is a luxury the likes of which Sandor has never once known.

And there is no way of knowing what awaits him on the other side of these walls.

He can hardly guess what Sansa may think of him now - he can only imagine how she must remember him.

A hulking monster.

A terrifying beast.

Hells, he would be lucky if she looked at him at all.

The night he had last seen her - the night the Blackwater burned, he had come to her in terror, seeking refuge and comfort and yet he had threatened her, frightened her and held his knife to her throat.

And as he thinks of it, he feels the shame of it burn bright inside him.

He may have found a way to heal his heart - regrow it from the ashes inside his chest and turn something once so raw and wounded into an eager muscle ready to pump hope and love through his veins, but that did not mean she would want it for her own.

There was nothing, nothing at all to say that when Sansa laid eyes on him she would see a changed man.

When the guardsman appears satisfied that Dryden is well within the castle walls, he returns his attention to Sandor.

“And you - are you to serve Lady Stark as well?”

He eyes him suspiciously, tilting his head as though he may get a better glance at Sandor’s hidden face.

“That is my intent.”

“We observe the Old Gods here in the North - you know that, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“And you still think you could be of some use?”

The words catch in his throat as he makes to answer - it is a question he has asked himself countless times before.

What could he possibly have to offer?

Sandor feels his heart thump hard against his ribs as if in answer - his hand falling to the sword at his hip.

And he knows assuredly anything he has - anything he is, his strength, his sword, his heart, his life, he will give to her.

He will love her, he will fight for her, he will serve her - he will keep her safe.

“Yes,” he says simply. “I do.”

There’s something raw and earnest in his tone, even in those few words, and the guard seems to hear it, because he sighs then and cocks his head.

“There are many more Southron folk here now than there ever was,” he says, “perhaps Lady Stark will find a place for you.”

“And may I meet with her?”

“You may not. The Lady of Winterfell is not here.”

This news is a blow he had not been expecting and it is enough to drive his madly beating heart to a momentary standstill.

Of all the different ways he had imagined this moment to play out, this is one he has not considered.

“When will she return?”

“I cannot say,” the guard is suddenly wary again, and he takes a step backward. “If you wish you may come back tomorrow to visit the Sept and inquire again.”

Sandor considers this - it is certainly not what he had been hoping for but it is passage beyond the gates nonetheless.

“I will,” he agrees - and when the next morning comes, he does.

-

With his horse comfortably boarded at a stable within the town, Sandor returns to the gate on foot.

The mid morning sky is a bright white expanse of cloud - the snowfall that had begun the night before has yet to stop and what was once a dusting on the ground is now deep enough to cover the tops of his boots.

He sees straight away that the guard has changed and yet this time, they do not question him.

And they have no better answer to give him when he asks after the Lady of Winterfell.

She has still not returned they tell him.

And so - because it feels like one step closer, or maybe because he cannot bear to turn and walk away a second time, Sandor asks to visit the Sept.

They lead him through the gates and under a bridge that spans the distance between two high towers, and into another courtyard.

And when Sandor is alone, save perhaps for a few mice skittering in the corners, he pulls back his hood.

The chamber is warm and dimly lit. Each of the seven shrines except that of the Stranger bear a few flickering candles of varying lengths, and he stands there a moment, looking at the empty altar, at the simple carved effigy, black and faceless and foreboding.

The Gods have never much meant anything to him, he would sooner piss on them than pray to them - no matter how long he had lived with the holy Brothers and so before he has time to reconsider, he takes an unlit candle from the basket by the door and goes first to the shrine of the Mother.

This effigy wears a kindly face, serene and beautiful and her outstretched hands are solid and sure.

He dips the wick of the new candle into one of those lit on the altar and looks into the Mother’s face.

“Thank you,” he says in a hoarse whisper, “for bringing me here.”

With the lit candle in his hand, he turns away and crosses the room to where the shrine of the Stranger sits cold and empty.

“I’m not afraid of you,” he says, fixing his gaze on the place where a pair of eyes would be were it a human face, “when you come for my soul, I will not be afraid but I ask of you one thing.”

He holds out the candle then, dripping a few beads of wax down onto the dusty altar before fixing the candle into place.

“Before you do - let me see her again, just once let me see her - that is all.”

Sandor bows his head, feels nothing as his hair ghosts across his ruined cheek and he shuts his eyes.

He thinks of that day - years ago, when the little Stark girl had left him dying under that tree.

He had said terrible things then - he remembers, just to rouse the girl’s temper, anything he could think of to make her draw her swords and give him the mercy he hardly deserved.

She had left him there to bleed and suffer and rot, and as the Stranger had circled like a vulture, waiting to lead his soul to the other side, he had thought only of Sansa.

The one true light in a life of utter darkness.

He has never once seen a prayer answered, there’s no reason to believe that things will change now - but whether or not the Gods are listening, he feels at peace within himself and that is all that matters.

He stands a while in front of the Stranger in silence and when the door opens, he starts, reaching immediately for his hood and pulling it up to hide his face.

“Oh,” a little voice says, and Sandor turns to see a girl - no older than eight years old, thin and rosy cheeked, still in the doorway, her eyes wide.

She looks first at him and then to the altar where he stands and a little frown appears on her mouth.

“Mama told me there was no Septon here,” she says. “Are you new?”

Sandor says nothing a moment, and then he nods.

“I came in the night.”

“Will you stay at Winterfell?”

“I hope to,” he says honestly.

“Good,” the girl says, suddenly smiling at him. “Then you can give me a prayer.”

Sandor may have lived some years with the Brown Brothers, but he is not one of them. He can recite a prayer when need be, but he is certainly no expert.

“I will do what I can,” he says, feeling the words leave him as though another has spoken.

From the pocket of her skirts, the girl pulls three short candles and he watches her pause a moment looking from altar to altar.

When her mind is made up, she goes first to the shrine of the Maid, turning back to look at him over her shoulder.

“This one is for my sister,” she tells him, “she’s to be married soon and she promised I could wear real roses in my hair and Mama said I could have a new dress.”

As she turns back to the altar to light her candle, Sandor comes to stand behind her.

He knows no words for sisters, or marriages or roses, but he gives her some anyway, borrowed here and there from any prayer for the Maid he can remember.

They go to the Smith next.

“For my Papa,” she tells him, “to keep him strong and steady his hand while he works.”

This time, he has a proper prayer for her - short and simple, one he had heard spoken often near the Brother’s forge.

Lastly, she leads him to the Crone.

“For Lady Stark,” she says and Sandor stills - waits. “To guide her home safely. I saw her leave a few days ago and she seemed ever so upset. She’s not usually like that, she always has a smile for me but she was worried about something, I think.”

“Can you guess what it might be?” He asks, forgetting for a moment that he’s playing the role of holy Brother reciting prayers.

The girl thinks on this, frowning a little as she does so.

“I don’t know, but I think she’s looking for someone right now.”

“Why do you think that?”

“I heard her say to her sister, Lady Arya ‘we have to find him’ and that was just after Astyr had come. I hadn’t seen Astyr for a long time, I think she must have just returned from a long journey.”

Sandor feels his heart trip and stutter and even before he asks, he knows what answer the girl will give.

“Who is Astyr?”

She beams at him then but she does not say the words he is expecting.

“Oh, you must see this - it is the most wonderful trick,” the girl says and she takes him by the hand, pulls him to the door and leads him outside.

They come to stand in a little patch of trees behind the Sept and she looks up at him her brow knit.

“Do you know how to whistle?”

Sandor nods.

“And do you know the Mother’s hymn?”

He nods again, chest tight.

“Then do just a little.”

He does as she asks then, closing his eyes and when he opens them again, there is a bird on the lowest branch of a nearby tree.

gen-tle-mo-ther

He whistles.

font-of-mer-cy

The magpie whistles back.

Sandor is not a witless man.

He had known, perhaps from the very first moment the bird had sung these notes that it was too great to be chance.

Somewhere inside of himself he had known it belonged to Sansa Stark.

And while he had followed it, accepted the gifts it had brought him and shown it care in return, while he had journeyed northward and come to Winterfell - even as he stands within the castle walls, he cannot bring himself to believe that she had called for him.

The magpie is watching him, tilting it’s head this way and that as if it’s trying to make sense of something and Sandor knows immediately what is wrong.

He lifts a hand to pull down his hood and shakes his long dark hair away from his face, looking at the bird.

It stares at him a moment and then gives a little titter before taking off, swooping into the air to circle his head a few times, landing finally on the palm of his outstretched hand.

gen-tle-mo-ther-gen-tle-mo-ther-gen-tle-mo-ther

The magpie does not stay still. It bounces on his hand whistling excitedly, it’s little claws digging in sharp until it flaps it’s wings, rises up and then dives back down towards him with a deep caw. The sound is almost enough to startle him, so shrill next to the shell of his missing ear, and the bird swipes at his robes with it’s beak, slicing away a small swatch of brown fabric.

Then, with another great flap, it takes off high into the snowy white sky and disappears behind a vast tower.

There’s an odd sort of feeling somewhere in the soles of his boots, in the bend of his knees, in the turn of his hips - a dormant energy that wants to spring to life and yet Sandor doesn’t move.

If the magpie had meant for him to follow, then it would have waited - it would have stayed at his side to lead the way.

This time, he knows, it is not for him. It is carrying a message.

Wherever Sansa may be, the bird will find her, he knows, and with that cutting of brown and dun, it will tell her that he has finally arrived.

-

Sandor says goodbye to the girl in the courtyard and though he means to leave her exactly where he had found her, she follows him, eyes wide with awe.

“That’s amazing,” she tells him, beaming again. “I’ve never seen Astyr come to anyone but Lady Stark.”

Sandor feels the corner of his mouth twitch.

“The bird and I are old friends,” he offers by way of explanation.

“Is that why you want to stay at Winterfell? Are you a friend of Lady Stark too?”

He starts to speak and then stops. There is no simple answer to that question, and certainly not one he wants to give to a child.

“I hope that Lady Stark and I may become better friends,” he says truthfully.

The girl nods as though this is all in accordance with a long agreed upon plan.

“Then you shall have three friends here. Lady Stark and Astyr and me too, and I shall help you I think,” she says, “my name is Safie, didn’t I tell you? What is yours?”

“Sandor."

“Sandor,” she repeats. She looks into his eyes, studies him a moment and then says, “what happened to your face?”

“Something terrible,” he tells her, “a long time ago.”

“Oh,” Safie says and though he can see sadness in her eyes, there is no pity. “Will you pray with me again sometime?”

“Perhaps,” Sandor says, and maybe he will.

This seems to please her because the girl is smiling again.

Her joy does not last long though - a second later her face falls with worry and he can hear the reason why.

“Honeybee,” a woman calls, “honeybee, where are you?”

“Oh!” Safie gasps. “That’s my sister. I was supposed to wait for her at the Sept. Come - you can meet her. She will like you too and then you will have four friends.”

Sandor grunts a laugh. He does not mind the girl - she is clever and brave too, he can tell, and though her confidence is heartening, it is also, he believes, quite misguided.

Children and animals were always less likely to judge by appearances alone.

“Dasha,” the girl shouts, running back towards the Sept. “Come and meet my new friend! We have a Septon at last!”

A woman appears then, from the other side of the building and Safie rushes to take her hand and drag her back to where Sandor stands.

She looks rather like Safie only ginger haired instead of blonde and at least ten years older. She wears a cloak and simple dress, long and woollen and suitable for the snowy weather and atop it, a mixture of mail and leather armour, a sword sheathed at her hip.

The woman looks at him, and he can see the customary flash of shock in her eyes when her gaze meets his face.

She looks away.

“He’s not a Septon, honeybee,” she says, her hand falling to her side to rest on the hilt of her sword. “He’s a Brown Brother, and I’m not even sure he’s a true one at that.”

“He read my prayers for me,” Safie argues.

“A lion in a lambskin is still a lion.”

“I am no lion, you can be assured,” Sandor says, his voice coming low and gravelly. The reference makes him oddly unsettled and threatening as he may look - for once he means no harm. “Any man can learn to lay down his sword and take up a star.”

He says the words thinking of the Elder Brother - a man who had in fact left behind years of brutality to live a pious life of faith and healing.

And maybe this is not the case for Sandor, he will never be a religious man, but he is no predator waiting to pounce.

“And any man can wear the clothes of another,” Dasha says, but she’s smiling now, "Only last night I heard the tale of a wanted man riding north disguised as a Brown Brother handing out prayers for the Stranger, you wouldn’t know anything about that would you?”

“Dasha is your name?” He asks, “you’re Dryden Beck’s girl.”

“I am,” she nods, “and you’re the man who saved his life.”

-

Sandor had barked a laugh at this, his eyes rolling near into the back of his head, and though he had told her the true account front to back, Dasha did not seem to care.

"Did you or did you not come to his rescue?" she asks, matter of fact and he nods, that part is at least true.

He's not quite comfortable with the way either of the girls look at him - as though he’s done some grand knightly deed deserving of great praise. By the sounds of it, Dryden had told her a mummer’s song, colourful and full of dramatic embellishment.

"Your man is a fine fighter, but perhaps even finer a storyteller," Sandor says, half annoyed.

"You have the measure of him to be sure,” Dasha laughs, "and he you, I think - he said there was a good heart hidden under all that gruffness."

"Did he," Sandor grunts.

The idea that they had talked about him in such a manner is unnerving - the condition of his heart is no one’s business but his own and maybe, hopefully, Sansa Stark’s.

"Indeed, and others shall see it too. Lady Stark has something of a fondness for misfits. If you are to stay at Winterfell, I’m sure you will have no trouble finding your place," she says brightly, and then, as though she knows he's about to argue she adds, "come and train with us this afternoon, you will see.”

Sandor says nothing, and then after a moment he nods.

“Alright then,” he says.

There is nothing to do but wait until Sansa returns, and so in the meantime, he might as well see for himself.

-


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> selfish love yeah we're both alone  
> the ride before the fall yeah  
> but i'm gonna take this heart of stone  
> i just got to have it all
> 
> \- still ozzy (go listen to the song and have some feels!)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this particular chapter is dedicated to swiftsnowmane
> 
> and! just in case anyone was wondering this is all book canon based and has absolutely nothing to do with whatever dumpster fire is going on over at hbo :)
> 
> thanks for all the beautiful comments <3<3

He accepts Dasha's offer that afternoon, and when he sees her again - Dryden too, with a company of other men and women, who all neither know nor care that he was once the Lannister Hound, Sandor finds her to be every bit as good a swordsman as he was told.

The snow carries on through the afternoon and into the evening and instead of retreating to some winesink or finding the nearest willing wench to plough his cock into as he might have once done, he takes his evening meal with Dryden, Dasha and their friends.

During day to day life on the Quiet Isle, Sandor had grown accustomed to breaking bread with the Brothers, but he had felt no more akin to them than he had to the veritable snakes and toads that had worn the white cloaks of the King’s Guard.

And though he cannot quite say that he is at ease in this group - friendship and camaraderie have never come to him naturally - there is something pleasant about the evening nonetheless.

Perhaps it is the food, whole and hot and filling as it is, or the ale that goes down just as easily - perhaps it is simply those comforts he has been so long without.

It could even be that for the first time in his living memory, he is in the company of others who see past the scars on his face.

Most of them still do not care to look at him longer than they have to, and after a few hours in the training yard, they know him to be both greatly skilled and wholly fearsome, but they do not treat him as the monster that he appears to be.

They have welcomed him as they would any other man.

Sandor listens as story after story is traded around the table and he throws in a word here and there.

It is nothing like the deadening calm that had hung over the Quiet Isle, half the men silent, the other half temperate and cowed and it is nothing still like the gut churning babble of the so-called knights of the King’s Guard.

They are simply men, and a few women, passing a snowy eve in good spirits.

And perhaps one day, if he cares to, Sandor may become one of them. 

When the topic of their conversation turns to the Lady of Winterfell, he finds himself suddenly more attentive.

Lady Sansa, he learns, left the castle some days ago to visit her cousin Jon Snow.

“Cousin?” Sandor asks, distinctly remembering the boy as a bastard of Lord Stark.

There is a great deal he has missed in his time on the Quiet Isle - most of which is tedious or miserable and of none of it is any interest to him anyway.

“It’s a long story,” a man called Emmond laughs, “were you these last few years under a rock?”

The woman called Rosie thumps him on the arm.

“He was living with monks, you fool,” she says, “or is your head so full of rocks you’ve already forgotten.”

“The Brown Brothers? Ah, I suppose that explains the robes, I did wonder,” Emmond says, and then his face falls in horror. “Years? You lived for years with monks? Oh you poor man - we must correct this at once!”

He leans back on his seat and waves a hand in the air catching the attention of a pretty barmaid, beckoning her to the table.

She waves to him, a smile on her full mouth and a sensual swagger in her hips.

“No,” Sandor says sharply, “that is not necessary.”

“Not your type?” Emmond asks, eyeing him curiously and Sandor grits his teeth, hardens his jaw. “There’s always Alta or Jem - if you like redheads she’s -”

Dryden leans towards them then as though he senses Sandor's overwhelming desire to drive the other man’s face into the tabletop.

“Don’t bother,” he says, shaking his head. “My Brother here is done for, head over heels in love. You’re wasting your time.”

And this does not make Sandor feel any better.

-

Sandor leaves shortly after.

It is snowing still - the night is black and white, and blissfully quiet unlike the lively crowd he had left indoors and he stands a moment under the eaves, breathing in crisp clean air.

He thinks of Sansa.

How long would she be away? Another week? A month?

It’s not as if there’s a thing he could do about it even if he knew.

He can do nothing more than wait.

He has seen her countless times, in the soft sunlight stretching through the clouds, the untouched snow, every flash of rusty red and glint of bright blue - this is her home after all, and her presence is everywhere.

He is tired and sore, and he longs to go to bed - and not to just sleep, but to sleep and dream of her. 

The door opens behind him and Dryden appears.

They stand a moment in silence and when Sandor shakes the snow from his hair with irritation, Dryden laughs.

“I do not like the snow, it is a nuisance I could live without - but one we must grow accustomed to,” he says, “this is our home now, Brother.”

“I am no buggering Brother,” Sandor says, feeling suddenly impatient. “You know my name, why don’t you use it?”

“I shall have to grow accustomed to that as well,” he says, “but it is not as though you are unused to wearing an epithet"

Sandor glares at him, biting back his sharp retort.

“Why don’t you care?” he says instead, putting voice to something he had wondered ever since the man’s face had dawned with recognition at the sound of his true name.

“You forget we were all at war,” Dryden says after a moment of thoughtful silence. “There isn’t one of us without a ghost in our past we would rather forget, and I say why not?”

“Is it that simple?”

“Who are you today? The same man you were five years ago?”

“No,” Sandor says truthfully.

“And why not?”

“Because I choose to better than that.”

The words come without thought or effort.

What had he been before the Brothers had taken him in?

Angry, jaded, hurt - he had let himself believe there was nothing sweeter in life than to fight and to kill and he had done so because that was all he had believed himself to be good for.

And now, with that thundering rage gentled inside him - he cannot say what he is, what he is good for, what he will become, but he knows with unfailing certainty it will be something better.

“Exactly,” Dryden grins at him. “I know a good man when I see one. You would not have rushed to my aide were you not, and let me tell you, Lady Stark would not bother herself with any less.”

Sandor looks at him sharply, opens his mouth to speak yet Dryden beats him to it.

“Didn’t I tell you?” he laughs, “your lady forewarned us of your arrival,” he says, repeating the words of the guardsman at the gate. “I was so damned eager I didn’t even stop to think - and you had your hood up didn’t you? It wasn’t until I was halfway to the guesthouse that I realised what must have happened.”

Sandor says nothing.

He feels his breath catch in his chest and he holds it there waiting for what Dryden will say next.

“She’s been searching for you, she put out word some days ago for a man of your look, to aide his way to Winterfell and treat him with utmost respect, though,” Dryden adds with something of a dark chuckle, “I think that part of the message must have been lost along the way if my capture was any indication.”

Yes, Sandor thinks - it must have.

And it had led him to believe that he was still a wanted man.

He releases his breath in a cloud of swirling steam, and stares at Dryden, unsure whether to believe his ears. 

He cannot say with any certainty what it does mean, but he cannot ignore the evidence either.

The magpie and now this - it was as though...

“She wants you here my friend,” Dryden says grinning smugly as he voices Sandor’s own thoughts. “You may not lose your cock after all.”

-

He finds his way to bed shortly after that.

By the time he had reached the inn where he is staying, Sandor had begun to limp.

Training that day had been exhilarating.

He had pushed his body hard, to limits it had not seen in years, and though it had left him sore and exhausted, he had reveled in it - it was a good kind of pain.

Sleep comes quickly, and with it immediately comes a dream.

It is not a dream of Sansa though. As blessed as it would be to see her face it seems his mind is not so obliging.

This dream is not a new dream either. 

It is one he has had countless times before - one that has never failed to make him ill with terror, shake him to his bones.

He dreams of fire.

And of a hand on his face, a knee in his back, the weight of a body much larger than his own, holding him to the floor.

He burns and he burns.

The fire consumes him until he is raw and flayed and screaming and when it stops, his brother is laughing.

Sandor looks down at his hands and finds nothing but blackened bone.

He touches his face - what had been his face - and finds a gaping hole, charred and crumbling.

And he wakes then, his heart thumping, breath coming hard and fast, and after a moment, when the room is no longer spinning before his eyes, he lifts a hand to his face.

What he feels under his fingertips is not whole and undamaged but it is at least solid. 

He has woken like this countless times and each time is no more pleasant than the last, even now that he is better armed to fight against the horrors of his past. 

Sandor closes his eyes tight, turns over and he lets his body sink further into the soft straw pallet.

There is surely someone at Winterfell that can tell him what has happened to Gregor Clegane.

If he were to ask.

He pulls in a deep breath, and imagines the sea, grey swirling waves rolling in and out.

He will not ask.

It doesn’t matter anymore.

Despite the horror of his dream, he is now more whole than he has ever been and that is how he wants to stay.

He sleeps. 

And the dream that follows could not be more different.

Sandor is on his back, staring up at a wide open sky.

He is in a clearing, or a meadow perhaps, with short green grass and sweet smelling flowers, yellow like sunshine, and as he turns his head, he sees her.

Sansa is laying next to him.

She smiles at him then, as he reaches for her and she comes to him without hesitation. 

She is silky under his fingertips, and her shift slips over her skin as he grasps her hips, slides his hand down her thigh, back up to smooth over her belly, cup her breasts.

Sansa arches into him, makes a soft little breath of pleasure and he feels a hot stab of longing between his legs.

Gods, he wants her. 

He wants so much.

His body cries out, demanding touch - to feel, to fuck and he holds her tightly.

Sansa pulls away.

She is not angry though - she is smiling again, her pretty face flushed pink.

“I have a gift for you,” she tells him, and then somehow her hands are full of a glowing golden light. 

She leans forward and tugs on the laces at the neck of his tunic. It falls away to nothing and suddenly he is bare chested, beastly and crisscrossed with so many old scars he wonders why she does not look away.

“What is it?” he asks.

“You’ll see,” Sansa says, and then with a swift movement of her hands, she plunges the light deep into his chest, right where he knows his heart to be.

He does not see.

There’s nothing to see but a searing, blinding light behind his eyes, he sees nothing - but he does feel.

By the Gods, does he feel.

He feels it from the top of his head to the tips of his toes, in his blood and his bones as it fills his lungs and leaks from his eyes. 

“What is it?” He chokes out the words between sobs and Sansa laughs, not unkindly.

“When you are ready,” she tells him, “return it to me.”

-

When he wakes the next morning, the snow has stopped and the sky is clear and blue.

It won’t last long - the innkeeper tells him so when she brings up a bucket of steaming water for the morning wash.

Winter is coming they say, but they don’t say in that dire way they used to. These people have seen spring, and they know that once winter has made its mark on the land, another spring will follow.

He sees to a few errands around Wintertown.

First, he visits a maester about the arrow wound in his shoulder.

It is healing well, he is told and before Sandor can leave, the old man offers to inspect the wound on his leg too.

“Lizard-lion get you on the way up?”

Sandor laughs at this - he cannot help it.

“Not exactly, and there’s no more you can do for it either,” he says. 

The maester frowns as though he has been issued a challenge.

“Hmm,” he muses, tugging on his beard. “I can give you something for the stiffness. You don’t look to me like a man who likes to keep still. It will help when you ride, and when you train and,” he pauses, smiling to himself, “with other things too.”

He goes then to the armourer to see about a better fit for the looted mail, and while he is there he trades his brown and dun robes for a woollen cloak, thick and black and warm. This too is meant for a shorter man, but it covers him adequately, with a deep hood that hides his face equally as well as his robes had.

On his great black steed, Sandor is more a picture of the Stranger, massive and foreboding, dark and faceless - there is no way he will be mistaken for a holy man now.

And yet somehow this makes no difference.

It seems that word has spread fast - the Southern folk that inhabit Winterfell and the surrounding town have heard there is a Brown Brother in the North and his sudden change in dress does nothing to hinder them from approaching him.

He is stopped twice in the street, and once during his midday meal, all by people who beg him for prayers and blessings.

And rather bluntly, he tells the them truth.

He might have lived with the Brown Brothers, but he has never studied their books, he does not pray to their gods and he cannot help them.

The townsfolk do not care.

He thinks of pulling back his hood, glaring at them and telling them each in turn to piss off and leave him alone and still somehow he holds his tongue.

He thinks of Sansa. 

These are her people and like it or not, for her he will show them tolerance.

Sandor had given them each a short prayer and thankfully that had been enough.

-

It is still clear the next day.

Sandor had woken to the sound of scratching and pecking outside his door.

He had thought at first of the magpie - he had not seen the bird since it had taken a piece from his robes outside the Sept and there was no way of knowing when it will return.

He knows it had gone to Sansa, wherever she is, but how long it will take for the magpie to fly there and back, if indeed it will fly back at all, he had no idea.

It was not the magpie.

It seemed the good people of Wintertown had left him gifts of thanks for their prayers - a small jar of honey, a braided leather belt, and Gods be damned…

It was a chicken.

A live chicken on a tether, one end tied around the bird’s leg the other tacked to the floor with a short peg.

He should have told them to piss off after all.

Sandor had pushed the bird aside with his boot as he had left, ignoring it’s indignant bawk and gone to find the innkeeper.

The honey and the belt, those he had taken and kept, but the bloody bird - he was no cook, nor hen keeper, he didn’t even like to eat the damn things.

The innkeeper on the other hand was thrilled to take it - and when he had come back hours later, the chicken was gone, along with the droppings it had left outside his door.

-

He meets with Dryden sometime around midday and they go to the castle together.

And this time, as he approaches the guardsman, Sandor pulls back the hood of his cloak.

The man stops short and squints his eyes, looking between Dryden and Sandor.

He frowns.

“This a joke then?”

“No, no, “ Dryden says before Sandor can speak. “It was my Brother all along, not me - he is the one you’re looking for.”

“You insult our Lady,” the guard says, bristling.

“What do you mean by that?” Sandor growls, taking half a step towards the guard and Dryden holds out his arm between them.

He asked the question for no reason.

He knows exactly what the guard means, and he watches the man blanch in slight terror in the face of his anger.

However Sansa has aged over these past years, he knows she has only grown more lovely - gentle and kind, composed and thoughtful, and beautiful, ever so beautiful. 

Of course this man would be disturbed to think of him as Lady Stark’s personal guest or as someone she could hold in any kind of esteem.

Sandor doesn’t blame him.

It’s not as if he understands it either.

He can now hesitantly say that Sansa’s intentions for him are good, but he cannot think as to why.

Years had passed since last he had seen her, but the passing of that time had not changed what he had done.

How could she have forgiven him?

How could she take him as her guest without first hearing his sorrow, his shame, his regret?

If it were true, Sandor thinks, letting the tension release from his body and stepping back from Dryden’s blocking arm, if it were true, then Sansa Stark was damn fine woman.

And too damn good for him, that was for certain.

“I am the man Lady Stark is looking for,” Sandor says, his voice a calm rasp, “she sent Astyr for me.”

At this the guard raises his brow so high it disappears under the brim of his helmet.

“Very well then,” he says, swallowing thickly, “welcome to Winterfell.”

-

He had gone back to the inn to collect his things - and to retrieve Driftwood from the stables too, which seemed to be something of a relief to the stable hand who had no luck in coaxing any cooperation out of the horse.

Sandor had felt a little burst of pride at this.

He may have seen better days, but his horse was still as fierce as ever - just as strong, just as powerful.

At first the Brothers had insisted they geld him, and Sandor had been too far out of his mind with fever to argue, but with Brother Gillam’s ear and Brother Rawney’s broken shin, Driftwood had spoken for himself.

When his horse had been boarded within the stables on the castle grounds he had taken his belongings and followed a chamber maid to guesthouse.

She had not looked at him the whole way, and when she had spoken, she had kept her eyes on the floor.

Sandor hadn’t spared her a single thought.

She had scuttled away as quickly as she could and he had shut the door on her, feeling a strange sort of reverence at the room in which he had been placed.

It was a generous space with a wide window overlooking not the grounds, or the town, but the vast stretches of wood and wildland beyond the castle walls, and as he had looked upon it, he had known without a doubt that Sansa had chosen it just for him.

The room had been furnished in no accidental way either. There was a table and chair under the window, a washbasin and soap with a stack of clean linens, and a proper bed, placed as far from the hearth as it could have been.

He had unpacked his saddlebag into the trunk at the foot of the bed and found within it fresh clothing in his size.

Sandor had sat back on his knees, his heart beating hard and heavy in his throat.

She had done this for him.

He had felt such a great sense of longing then that it had passed through him like physical pain.

Anything, he had thought.

Anything he had left to give was hers.

-


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I've seen your face a hundred times  
> Everyday we've been apart  
> I don't care about the sunshine, yeah
> 
> \- still ozzy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some m-rated goodies in this chapter, enjoy ;)

The next day he meets with Dryden early in the morning.

They spend a good few hours in the training yard and when they break for the midday meal, though he is tired and sore and he feels stronger than ever, and that is something.

It shows in each swipe of his sword, in his sure footing and strong stance, he takes blows just as readily as he gives them and it feels fantastic.

This is something he had been good at once and he still is - he still is.

After they have eaten, Dryden accompanies him to the stables and they both see to their horses, preparing to ride that afternoon into the wolfwood.

Neither of them know the surrounding land and they had agreed it would be remiss not to learn they lay of their new home.

It had felt strange to Sandor to speak of Winterfell as such.

There had been truth to it though. The Quiet Isle was not his home, nor more than King’s Landing had ever been - and his family’s Keep, that place was full of so many horrors he could hardly stand to think of the place.

Faster than he would have thought, he had found his footing here and he could only imagine what would happen once Sansa returned.

The effort she had gone to seeing that he would be comfortable in her home was evidence enough that even with time and distance between them, something had grown.

Not that he knew what it was.

Not that he would dare guess.

What could they be now that they were to meet as equals? 

When they had known each other years ago, Sandor had been well aware of the fact that she had been no more than a girl - a pretty bird in a gilded cage.

Even when he had pressed himself upon her and threatened unspeakable things, it was not a woman’s body he had felt beneath him and his shame for it was all the more.

He had behaved exactly like the monsters he had sworn to protect her from.

Sandor had sometimes wondered what would have happened if they had left together that night.

It would have been a mistake assuredly and he would have regretted it the rest of his days. 

As much as it had pained him at the time not to take her in some way for himself, he’d had no choice but to let her go.

And if - if they were meant to find their way back to each other, they would.

-

There’s something of a disturbance at the stables when he and Dryden return to the castle late that afternoon.

Sandor can hear the voice of a man, clearly angered, speaking with a guardsman and he signals to Dryden to enter quietly.

“You mean to tell me she is not here - when I expressly arranged to arrive on this day? When your Lady knew I would be coming?” the man says with utmost irritation, “this, you see is why women cannot be trusted in positions of power. Even the simplest of meetings are flouted, there is no respect, no decency, if only she had a husband to keep her in line -”

He hears Dryden snort in indignation as Sandor clear his throat, and the angry man stops short mid word.

“Harrot, is this man welcome here?” Sandor asks and the accompanying guard answers. 

“He is a guest of Lady Stark - Lord Barrow, of The Rills.”

“And who are you?” Lord Barrow sneers. His face blanches as Sandor pulls down his hood and glares back at him.

“We are men of Lady Stark,” Dryden says, and the man’s eyes flit back and forth between he and Sandor, visibly nervous. “That is all you need know.”

“What I need to know, is when she will be back.”

“Lady Stark is away,” Sandor tells him, his voice hard like steel on stone. “If you care to wait for her, then you’ll watch your mouth while you do.”

“Or?” Barrow says.

His confidence clearly a front, Sandor can see it in the twitch of his eyes, hear it in the nervous waver in his voice - the man has every reason to be afraid.

“Then we shall gladly show you what happens to those who do not give the Lady of Winterfell due respect,” Dryden says. He gives the man a most charming smile, as though he and Sandor offer a great gift. 

“It was nothing,” Lord Barrow mumbles just as the guardsman speaks.

“That won’t be needed, boys,” Harrot says, “go and see to your horses, I’ll see to Lord Barrow’s mouth.”

“You dare speak to me like that?”

“I do,” the guard nods, “or would you rather these two look after you?”

Lord Barrow blusters, grumbling and scowling but he does not say another word.

Sandor does as he is asked as well, and leads Driftwood to an open stall, Dryden following with his own horse.

He says nothing a moment, begins to work on the buckles and clasps of Driftwood’s saddle. 

He does not much like the way that Lord Barrow had spoken of Sansa, but that is not what worries him.

“Out with it,” Dryden says, “you’re not planning to kill him in his sleep are you?”

“No,” Sandor says, grunting a laugh.

He says nothing a while longer, tending to his horse and then finally when Driftwood is free of tack and saddle, he faces Dryden.

“She was meant to be back now.”

“Yes, I did catch that detail,” Dryden says and sighs, “I don’t think it’s any cause for alarm. Lady Sansa is with a company of good men and Dasha told me she travels with her sister Lady Arya, and she is something fierce, or so I’ve heard.”

“You have hear correctly,” Sandor laughs.

It is something of a comfort to know that the Stark girls are together. He knows the wolfpup - what she is and what she can do and for that he knows Sansa is in safe hands.

He feel a slight twinge of longing then, not as sharp nor as weighty as it had been that night in his room, but as he thinks of her, Sandor cannot help but wish it were he who was tasked with that duty.

To keep her safe, well and truly this time and make good on a promise made years ago.

He continues to think of Sansa all the while as he and Dryden care for their horses and when they are done, they leave the stables for supper.

“Still clear,” Dryden says rather pleased nodding towards the sky. 

Sandor looks up. It is indeed clear blue, tinted rosy orange with the setting sun and just then, there is a flash of something black overhead.

His heart gives a heavy thump as Astyr circles and dips in the air, and she whistles to him, the Mother’s Hymn.

gen-tle-mo-ther

Sandor whistles back.

font-of-mer-cy

He holds his hand out to receive her and the bird lands gracefully on his palm. 

There is something clutched tightly in her beak and with a little caw she drops it into his hand, hopping back to flap her wings. Astyr rises high enough to settle onto his shoulder as if she intends to give him room to inspect the gift she has brought.

“What is it?” Dryden asks, curiously peering into Sandor’s hand.

He says nothing.

It is a lock of hair, no longer than his shortest finger, tied tightly with a thin white cord and it shines like spun copper, like the finest ruby in the palm of his hand.

He stares at it.

The thump of his heart has become a steady drum against his ribs, his breath cut short.

He knows little of romance and lovers, never having had either for himself and yet he knows what this is...

“Well, well,” Dryden laughs, clapping Sandor on the back. “A favour from your lady. Things are shaping up nicely, aren't they!”

Sandor says nothing.

He closes his hand gently, feeling the soft tickle of silky hair against his fingers and he holds it there - a piece of Sansa.

She has sent him a piece of herself.

-

With the lock of hair tucked carefully into a small pouch on his belt, he had gone to eat with Dryden and the others.

Sandor had barely said a word the whole time, his mind preoccupied with the gift the magpie had brought him.

He had known unlike the other bits and pieces she had given him to coax him into coming out of exile, this one was not foraged or snatched.

Astyr had delivered the cutting of his robes to Sansa, and Sansa had sent the cutting of hair with intent.

He had heard of ladies sending such things to their sers - a slip of lace from their petticoats, a scrap of silk from their shawls, or a lock of their own hair, enclosed within a letter, shut inside a locket.

It was a lover’s command - think of me, it said, while we are apart.

Think of me.

And he had.

He had thought of little else.

Sandor had returned to his room after the meal, and stayed a while staring out of the window at the setting sun.

The lock of Sansa’s hair, he had taken from his pocket, held for a moment between his thumb and forefinger. It was silky soft, each individual strand seemingly a different shade - some bright and coppery, some mahogany, some russet, some a deep red like dried blood.

He had thought of stowing it away in his trunk, within the little cache of treasures he had kept.

The blue ribbon, the soft grey feather, the weirwood leaf, the bone, the needle, the sea glass.

But a gift like that deserved a place of greater honour, and after all - it was intended as a reminder of her, a way to think of her while she was not here, why should he want to hide it away?

Sandor had placed it on the windowsill - right where the evening sunlight would catch it and set it aglow.

Astyr had scarcely left him alone from the moment she had delivered Sansa’s gift. She had stayed on his shoulder until they had gone inside to eat, and even then instead of waiting outside, she had flown up into the rafters.

At the end of his meal, Sandor had saved a scrap of meat and a corner of bread for her and she had swooped down to take them as gratefully as a bird could do.

Afterwards, she had followed him through the castle to the guesthouse and perched on a post at the doorway, tittering softly.

gen-tle-mo-ther-gen-tle-mo-ther

She whistled, titling her head to look at him this way and that.

It was as though she had expected something.

Not food - no, he had shared his supper with her, and besides, magpies were great scavengers, he knew she would find more on her own.

There was something else she was after, and in that moment Sandor had realised what it was.

Her mistress had sent a gift, and Astyr had every intent in seeing one returned.

“I will think of something,” Sandor had told her, wondering just how much the bird understood.

She seemed satisfied with this because she had tittered again, and flown up into the air, circling him before disappearing into the darkening sky.

She was not gone for good, he knew. Astyr would stay close by until he had given her a treasure of his own.

-

When the sun has fully set, and the orange glow that surrounds the castle is that of torchlight, Sandor leaves his room and goes down to the bathhouse.

He has keep clean enough these last few weeks but it has been some time since he last saw a hot bath.

A freezing creek was no replacement for a pool of steaming water and now a guest of Winterfell, he is welcome to use the bathhouse as he pleased.

The chambermaid who had shown him to his room had also given him directions to the baths, and he follows her word, down into the depths of the castle.

The room holds one large rectangular pool in the centre and two smaller ones at either end, each hot and steamy and welcoming.

His tired muscles sing at the thought and he readies himself quickly, stripping down to nothing and wrapping a towel around his waist.

There are only three others present - a man and woman who share one of the side pools and a single man on his own in the larger one. The couple pays him no mind and as he passes them, he hears a slosh of water and a hushed giggle.

The lone man looks up at him though, his eyes widening when Sandor drops his towel and takes the steps at the far end of the pool.

And oh Gods be good it is blissful.

He sinks onto the low stone shelf, laying his head back against the edge of the pool and the slightest groan escapes his lips.

The water swirls around him, his legs and back immediately relaxing in the heat.

He shuts his eyes, breathes in deep and for a while, does nothing at all.

After sometime, he gets around to washing.

An attendant had supplied him with a sliver of soap and a cloth, and he makes good use of both, working the soap into a thick lather and scrubbing first his face and hair.

He dunks his heads under the water to rinse away the suds and rises, his hair thick and dark and streaming down his back.

Hair grows thick and dark on the rest of his body too, over his arms and legs, across his hard chest and down his taut belly, thickest at the point from which his cock hangs heavy between his legs.

He soaps over those parts too, and when he is sufficiently clean, Sandor settles back against the wall of the pool, shutting his eyes.

He could do this every day if he wanted now - maybe he would.

A some point during his wash, the other man had left and he opens one eye to the sound of much splashing and giggling from the other end of the room.

The couple is leaving the pool, the noise of their hurried feet pit patting on the stone. He hears the distinct sound of a wet slap as the man gives his partner’s bottom a smack, and the shriek that follows.

Then everything is quiet.

He is alone.

The silence feels almost as good as the water, and yet it is now that his mind springs to life.

Instead of remaining calm and relaxed, Sandor begins to wonder.

He had told the magpie he would send Sansa a gift of his own, but that was easier said than done.

Again the question he has asked himself countless times comes to mind.

What did he have to offer her?

He had his strength - far more of it than he had previously thought, his skill, his courage, his resilience, his protection, and maybe one day his love too, and that was well and fine, but what object could he give her?

What could he send that Sansa could hold onto and think of him?

He considers this for a long while and comes up with nothing.

He has so little of his own - so little that means anything to him that hasn’t already come from her.

With his eyes closed, Sandor pulls in a deep breath and suddenly he sees her, clear as anything in his mind’s eye.

Bright blue eyes, pale skin, pretty pink mouth and her hair, Gods, her hair, framing her face and tumbling over her shoulders.

What would it be like to bury his face in it, lose himself in her scent - comb his fingers through it and hear her little whimper of satisfaction as he bared the skin of her neck?

Quite without meaning to, his cock has begun to grow thick and hard and it bobs in the water against his leg as if begging for touch.

He knows it’s hardly good manners, and at any moment some other person could enter the baths and catch him like this, but he cannot bring himself to care.

With the heel of his hand, he presses into his groin, and then, as the vision in his mind drifts from Sansa’s face and downward toward breasts peaked with small pink nipples, a soft belly, long legs and a thatch of copper hair between them, he takes himself in hand.

The first few strokes are gentle and yet he feels them down to his toes.

What would her touch be like?

Gentle and hesitant? Or firm and demanding? Perhaps a little of both.

If she ever wanted to touch him at all.

Sandor crushes the thought immediately,

As unlikely as it is, now is not the time. Tonight he will let himself have this fantasy.

She would hold him in both hands - she would have to, he knows, his cock is thick and long enough for two hands with room to spare.

She could take the rest into her mouth, if she wanted to.

His belly clenches at the thought, his balls tightening, and he brings his free hand into the water to give them a firm tug, working his length a little harder.

He hasn’t had a woman in years - not since well before the Quiet Isle.

And without fail, every time he has fucked into his fist and come at his own hand, he has thought if her.

The Sansa in his mind tosses her hair over one shoulder and draws herself near.

He can almost imagine the softness of her skin, her sweet smell, the way her lips would feel when she kissed him.

That is another thought that gives him pause.

His mouth is damaged and uneven, burnt away at one side where his cheek fades into thick scarring.

Sandor has never been kissed there and he has never asked a woman to.

Whores and wenches took his coin and turned their backs on him, unwilling to look into his face as he fucked them and he had never once cared.

With Sansa though, he would want everything.

He would want her touch, gentle grasps and firm strokes, the dig of her nails, the bite of her teeth.

He would want to take her, face to face, for the first time at least - look into her eyes and see no fear, no hesitation. Nothing but desire and dare he say it, affection.

He would want that kiss.

He grunts at another surge of pleasure, working his hand in long steady strokes.

He rubs his thumb into the head of his cock, feeling it slippery even in the warm water and he squeezes his eyes tight, thinking of her mouth.

Sansa’s full pink lips parted and glistening and oh so inviting.

Gods be damned - to kiss her, just to kiss her.

There is that telling surge in his groin - his balls tight and heavy, cock hard like hot steel in his palm and a second later, with a stifled growl he is coming.

Thick spurts of seed release into the swirling water as stars explode behind his eyes.

Bloody hells.

Bloody fucking hells.

-

Sandor sleeps well that night - so deeply that he does not even dream and he wakes much later in the morning than usual. 

His body is well rested and even as he feels strong and powerful and ready for action, he does not rise straight away.

There is only a hint of stiffness in his bad leg too, as though these last few days have done the muscle good.

Sandor rolls onto his back, stretching out into the empty space next to him and lays a hand on his injured thigh. There is a shallow indent in the flesh, long healed but never quite repaired and he smooths his fingers over it, rubbing away a little of tautness from the muscle.

He has survived so much, and has the scars to prove it - surely that meant there was something better waiting for him.

He could not have lived through all of this for nothing.

The day he had left the Quiet Isle, as he had said his goodbyes to the Elder Brother, he had told the man his wish was for nothing more than to make the most of the life ahead of him.

It was as true then as it is now - only then, his dreams had been so small.

The most he had ever let himself consider was a life in Sansa’s service, to stay as one of the many swords that guarded her castle, something - anything to live out his days doing his part to keep her safe.

And yet now - now it was as though his eyes had been opened.

There could be more - he could be more.

He could serve, and he could fight, and he could also love.

And as he stares across the room at the windowsill, to the spot where he had left the cutting of Sansa’s hair, glowing in the morning sun, Sandor thinks of something else.

He could learn to love and perhaps one day he could be loved in return.

What would it be like to wake with her? To sleep beside her through the night? To go to bed together - to bring each other comfort and pleasure, body to body, skin to skin?

It is an idea he cannot possibly comprehend.

Still, he cannot help but want it.

To watch the soft morning sunlight kiss her bare skin, shine jewel bright through the tangle if her hair. To wrap himself around her as they slept. To take her to bed, to hold her, to fuck her, to have her for his own and to give himself fully in return.

He wants it all.

And he can only hope one day he will find out.

Sandor stares a moment more out of the window. The sky is pale and still clear but he can see, off in the distance, heavy grey clouds that threaten snowfall.

If it must snow, he thinks, rising to begin his day, then let it be light and quick.

Let it do nothing to hinder Sansa’s way home.

-


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 'cause mama, mama, i'm coming home  
> i'm coming home
> 
> -

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> had a rough week - hope i can catch up soon.

His body had not failed him when he had met Dryden and the others in the yard.

The strength that he had felt that morning had been no illusion, and the other men had seen it too. They had taken him on, one by one and he had brought them all down with ease. Sandor had been swift and precise - as though the he release he had found the night before and the great rest that had followed it had somehow made him more powerful.

Dryden had faced him last, the only one of which Sandor had felt was a worthy opponent. The others were by no means incompetent, but there was a formality lacking in their training and he had begun to wonder who these people had been before they had gone to war. Still, with a few weeks under his instruction, he could have them in fine shape.

Dryden on the other hand was a better match in size and in skill, with a focus and drive that rivalled his own.

It had seemed so strange to him, how readily he had come to appreciate Dryden’s company, how he had begun to think of the man as his friend. It had grown so naturally and without effort and Sandor had wondered if perhaps this was the first true evidence that his heart had indeed changed.

After all, how could he expect to give and take as a lover if he could not do so as a friend?

When they had finished, he had declined an offer to follow the others for food and ale in Wintertown, instead choosing to take his meal quickly and return to his room to ready himself for a long ride.

-

With a saddle bag packed, Sandor makes his way to the stables around midday.

Winterfell is still largely unfamiliar to him. True, he had visited this place years ago but back then he had seen the castle from the end of a tight leash. 

Sandor hardly remembers what the place had looked like then - grey and forbidding, a lump of rock in a bigger lump of snow. The ride up had been miserable, just as the return journey had been too. He had killed a few men - and a boy - in between, and all the while he had tried to close his ears to the torrent of shit that had spewed from Joffrey’s mouth.

Isn’t she a pretty little bitch? Her father has given her to me. Stupid man. Pity I cannot have her now - just wait, in no time I’ll have her choking on my seed. Wouldn’t you love that, dog? To take a sweet little thing like that for your own?

There had been many reasons to wish him dead - more than Sandor had fingers to count them on and then some, but it had been for Sansa that he had thought of most. Joffrey was the monster that had tormented her, caused her such pain and suffering, and that had been the greatest reason he had deserved to die.

Perhaps the castle has changed some over the years or perhaps it is that he now looks upon it with new eyes.

It feels different.

It is just as grey and forbidding, and yet there is majesty to it, something old and wild and strong and worthy of great respect.

Sandor knows what an asset it is to know his surroundings and he plans to learn the place and learn it well, from the towers and the courtyards, down to the pathways and passages - the streets of Wintertown and the Wolfswood beyond.

And when Sansa returned, maybe she could tell him something of it’s history too.

He lets his mind wander as he readies his horse, imagining a blissful scene in which she would tell him brick by brick how Winterfell came to be.

They would lay curled together, in his bed, or in a green grassy field with the sky bright and endless over their heads - just as they had in that dream. He would hold her close, let his hands rub soothing trails into her back and press his face into her hair, all the while listening to the stories of the ages flow sweetly from her pretty mouth. 

And if they fucked afterwards, well he certainly wouldn’t complain about that.

While Sandor had released some of his great need the evening previous, it seemed only to have come back in full force and he had spent the morning chasing away all kinds of salacious thoughts.

He had tried to keep himself occupied, thinking of something he might send Sansa in return and he had come up with nothing. His mind had done little more than unhelpfully supply images of her naked and panting, a smile on her lips and a sparkle in her bright blue eyes.

As he had dressed himself that morning he had even imagined Sansa on her back, her knees slung over his shoulders as he devoured the essence from between her legs like rich cream and honey.

He had never tasted a cunt before - the type of women he had bedded were for fucking and little more and he had never once been interested in seeing to their pleasure.

With Sansa it would be different.

For her, he would learn.

And he wants to learn - to find each and every place on her body that makes her gasp and moan, to seek out each taste and each scent. He would put his hands and his mouth anywhere and everywhere she would let him. He would drown himself in the ripe juice of her cunt - lick her and stroke her, suck and nip, fuck her with his tongue, his fingers, his cock.

He would spend a lifetime learning her pleasure, and by the Gods would he make her sing.

Sandor shakes a little of the fog away from his mind.

There’s a telltale heaviness in his groin, a shiver of desire trickling down his spine and he pushes the thought away, calling up a different memory to get his thoughts in check.

Something gory, something gruesome, anything to divert the rush of blood to his cock.

Now isn’t the time - perhaps later, but definitely not now. 

He thinks of Joffrey again, the image of that cruel little face rising to the forefront of his mind and he sees ever so clearly the look of pleasure the boy had worn as he’d had Sansa stripped and beaten.

It is more than enough to wash the heat from his blood. This memory sends a bitter chill right through him and quite suddenly Sandor feels sick with himself.

He had done nothing for her then.

And here he was salivating over her like some savage dog.

He’d done nothing to protect her when she had needed him the most, and yet she had still sent him that gift - a true maiden’s favour, as though they belonged to each other, as though they had been anything more than two damned souls passing through hell at the same time.

“Why,” Sandor growls, his voice coming harsh and gravelly and Driftwood snorts at the sound and tosses his head.

How could she have come to think of him like this - when he had never once done a single thing to deserve her admiration?

For a moment, he presses his face against the side of Driftwood’s head and strokes his hand down the horse’s long smooth nose.

“I do not deserve her,” Sandor says, this time in a low whisper.

And he doesn’t - no matter how he thinks of it, no matter how the rage inside of him is now nothing more than a dull roar, no matter how his heart aches to love and be loved in return, he will never be worthy.

Sandor scrubs his face with both hands and presses his palms hard against his eyes.

He would lose his mind over this well before she ever returned.

When he opens his eyes again, his mind is clear - he thinks neither of Sansa nor Joffrey, of nothing but the sea rolling grey and frothy in and out on the sand.

“Alright,” he says to Driftwood, leading the horse from his stall. “Let’s go.”

-

Sandor brings the horse across the yard, intending to leave not through the South gate, but through the Hunter’s Gate on the West side that leads directly to the Wolfswood.

He comes no farther than the entrance to the kennels when three small shapes come running through the archway, tumbling to a stop at his feet.

“Brother Sandor!” Safie shouts, “oh please you must come.”

The girl’s face is alight with worry, as are that of her companions, another girl Safie’s age and a smaller boy.

“What is it?” He asks, though she need not say a thing, Sandor can hear it - a commotion in the kennel yard, loud raised voices of men arguing, the bark of agitated dogs.

“We came to visit Bryar,” Safie explains, rushed and breathless, “she just had pups and Master Laregan lets us play with them so long as we don’t get in the way and we were there, when someone came through the Hunter’s gate with Oryon and Arora and Master Laregan asked him where Torcheart was and the man said something which made Master Laregan ever so angry and oh - you must come!”

“Is there a fight?”

Safie nods, her eyes wide.

“That cross little man started saying all kinds of awful things.”

Ah, he thinks sourly - even in a castle of hundreds of people, he can still guess who that might be.

“You were right to fetch me,” Sandor tells her and Safie smiles at him. “Now go on.”

She does just as he asks and he hears the patter of soft little shoes echo through the archway as they take off. Once he has tethered Driftwood to a nearby gate, he moves just as swiftly to the kennels.

There is indeed a fight.

Two men stand face to face, a mere breath between them and a third - a squire by the looks of him, in Winterfell colours, hovers uncertainly at the sidelines. One he recognises as the kennel master, a man called Laregan, wiry and tough and old enough to be Sandor’s father, and the other - just as he suspected, is Lord Barrow.

“I give you three of my dogs, I expect three to come back,” Laregan says, poking Barrow in the chest.

“The useless thing was injured, I wasn’t going to waste my time with a half dead mut,” Barrow shouts even as he shrinks away from the kennel master’s accusing finger.

“No,” the squire says, “he was hurt something awful but he wasn’t dead.”

“No one asked you,” Barrow spits, rounding on the squire.

The boy takes a step back, but there is no fear in his eyes.

“It’s the truth, and it wasn’t right to leave him behind either!”

“If you don’t shut up, I’ll -”

“Where in the hells is my bloody hound?”

“That’s enough,” Sandor snaps, his voice cutting through the argument.

The three men fall into sa startled silence and look at him, and he sees again the flicker of sickly revulsion pass over Lord Barrow’s face as he meets his eyes. The man’s expression changes quickly to one of utmost irritation.  
“You,” Sandor says, pointing at the squire, “tell the man what happened to his dog, and you,” he adds with a sharp eye on Barrow, “keep your buggering mouth shut.”

“Or what you’ll -”

“Yes, I’ll bloody well help you. Shut it.”

Lord Barrow harrumphs and crosses his arms over his chest.

“I will not listen to this,” he says, “the boy was about as useless as the damned dog - I should have left them both behind. This whole place is a farce! Every last facet a reflection of poor leadership and -”

“Now, now!” Laregan shouts, curling his fists. “You’ll not speak that way of Lady Stark!”

Without hesitation, Sandor lays a hand on Barrow’s chest, grasping the closure of his cloak.

“Have you something else to say about the Lady of Winterfell?” He growls, lifting the man in the air so that the toes of his boots scrape the ground. “If you must, go ahead now that I may hear you properly.”

As if to emphasise the threat, Sandor leans his ear closer to Lord Barrow’s mouth and waits.

Barrow squeaks.

“What was that?”

“Nothing,” he mumbles, “nothing.”

Sandor drops him. 

The man lands in a heap on the ground.

“Disgusting,” Lord Barrow says under his breath, pulling himself to his feet and dusting the dirt from his breeches. “Of course the Lady Stark has herself an attack dog.”

Sandor feels the words hit him hard and yet somehow, he laughs, a short humourless bark that drains all the colour from Barrow’s face. He turns to him, his lip pulled back in a sneer.

“You have no idea.”

-

The guardsmen were called to escort Lord Barrow back to his rooms, and as soon as he had gone, grumbling and huffing the whole way, Sandor had renewed his request to the young squire.

“Tell the man what happened to his dog.”

And the boy does.

“We took the the three out just after dawn, I heard Lord Barrow say he didn’t care much for what he caught so long as he brought something back. Said he was just passing time until Lady Stark returned,” he says, looking purposefully into Sandor’s face.

There’s discomfort in his eyes, as though it is a task that requires a great amount of determination, but he does it all the same.

“We came across three foul almost straight away, caught them quick as anything,” the squire says and turns to Master Laregan, “fine dogs you have, they brought the birds in and while we were making to head back there was a disturbance in the wood. They dropped the birds and faced the trees, barking up a storm and a great bear tumbled out of the bush. Soon as Lord Barrow saw the thing he nearly fell out of his saddle.”

Here the boy pauses, an undisguised smirk on his face.

“My dogs know better than to bait an animal like that,” Laregan says, frowning.

“Barrow ordered them at it, kept screaming at them to charge,” the squire explains, “and they wouldn’t do it, just stood their ground. I think he meant to scare it off, because he took something from his saddle bag and threw it at the bear but that only made it angry, and it took a swipe with it’s paw.”

“That stinking pile of horse shit,” Laregan snarls.

“One of them took the hit to it’s muzzle, and the other two started barking like mad. That was enough to frighten the bear away and I asked Lord Barrow shouldn’t we get the dog and bring it back, but he was yelling about getting out of there, he left his birds behind and everything, threatened me with this and that until I followed.”

“Do you know where you left the dog?” Sandor asks, and the squire nods.

“Indeed, ser.”

“Can you take me there?”

He doesn’t know why he says these words, only that it is as though some part of him had intended to go after it from the very beginning. Listening to the squire’s story had only made him hate Barrow all the more. 

Whatever it was the man wanted, Sandor could only hope once Sansa returned it would be attended to quickly, so Barrow could go back to whatever cave he crawled out of.

Again the squire nods.

“You would do that?” The kennel master says in disbelief.

“Was it a good hound?” Sandor asks and Laregan answers.

“The best.”

-

The squire’s name is Kaspar Syders - and as Sandor discovers shortly after, he’s no true squire at all.

“I would be, ser, if I had a knight to see to,” he says as they ride through the Hunter’s Gate and out into the wolfswood.

He’s young, maybe fourteen years old, tall and thin like a blade of dry grass with hair to match. There’s something solid about him though - something sure in the way he plants his feet to the ground and it is his first inclination to approve of the boy.

“What happened to Barrow’s squire? Did he not travel with his own men?” Sandor asks, and the boy laughs.

“He did - brought two snotty little toads and they made such a fuss in the Guardhall last night that someone spiked their ale. Haven’t left their chamber pots all morning.”

It was a shame, Sandor thinks, that Barrow had not received some of that ale as well. 

They carry on a while longer, deeper into the wood until Kaspar shouts to stop, pulling hard on the reins of his horse.

“There!”

He points into a small clearing at a patch of snow where a deep depression lays, tinted pink with blood.

They both dismount their horses and Sandor moves in, crouching to look closely at the ground.

There’s evidence of a scuffle - bear’s tracks in the mud and many more smaller ones too belonging to the three dogs.

“This where you saw it last?”

The boy comes to his side and crouches next to him, as though to mimic Sandor’s every move.

“No, this is where it fell, but last I saw it went staggering off into the bush.”

Sandor nods, looking to where the boy points. At this distance, he can see a small smear of blood against a tree trunk, and the matted undergrowth marking the dog’s unsteady trail.

Before he rises to his feet, he looks back at the snow - there is something, just there in the thickest pool of blood, something smooth and shining like polished bone.

It’s a tooth.

A long pointed canine, knocked clean from the dog’s mouth with the force of the bear’s blow.

He reaches for it, his fingers coming away slippery with blood and Sandor holds it for a moment, rubbing away some of the mess with his thumb.

This is it, he thinks, feeling a sudden tightness in his chest.

This is his gift.

Sandor stands a moment later and drags a hand through his hair, the tooth clasped tightly in his other hand.

Within the last few moments, it has begun to snow, and not only that, it is late in the afternoon as well. If they are to find the dog, they must do it quickly before sundown.

He drops the hound’s tooth safely into the pouch on his belt and turns to the boy.

“I have no more need of you,” he says and Kaspar seems to deflate like a punctured bladder.

“I don’t mind, ser,” he says hopefully, “I’d look after everything for you, like a proper squire.”

“Knights have squires,” Sandor says, “and I am no knight.”

-

He had been prepared for a long ride into the wood with the full intent that he would use this time to get to know his surroundings all the better. The boy had nothing with him but the clothes on his back and the horse between his legs.

Though he had done so rather reluctantly, Kaspar Syders had turned back towards Winterfell and Sandor had gone on in pursuit of the injured dog.

After only what was perhaps twenty minutes since the boy had left, the ground had grown white with fresh snow and it had only seemed to come faster and harder after that.

To follow the dog’s path, he’d had to walk most of the way, leading Driftwood through the brush, hacking away at low branches with Brother Melling’s axe and it had grown colder and colder the farther he had gone.

Sandor had shouted for the dog to no use, and just as he had begun to regret his decision to go after it, there it was - a dark huddled shape, half covered in snow.

It was a fine dog, he could tell even from the way it had lain prone and unconscious, large and grey with a smooth shining coat. 

“Torcheart,” he’d said, and though the dog’s ear had twitched he had not moved.

The dog’s face was a mess with blood. The side of his mouth where the tooth had been knocked clean was puffy and swollen, his eye too, his cheek scratched through by the bear’s claws.

It was a nasty injury, but the dog was by no means dead.

As Sandor had knelt in the snow and lifted it into his arms it had let out a little whimper, and he had carried it back to where Driftwood waited patiently.

In this terrain, both he and the dog would be far too heavy for his horse to carry comfortably - and so with Torcheart slung over the saddle, he had turned his horse and begun the long walk back. 

-

The snow only grows worse as he walks.

And what is more, as the air becomes colder, the wind harsher, he feels it all the more in the muscle of his injured leg.

Sandor keeps a steady, determined pace as the sun grows lower, his boots now sinking into several inches of heavy wet snow.

Why had he gone after the damned dog in the first place?

He looks back at it briefly, laying like a sack of grain over his saddle.

He had hated the way that Barrow had treated it, as though it were something to be abused and discarded and not as a fine working animal of great skill and worth.

He cannot say how long he has been walking, but the trees are thinning, and that is a good sign. He will soon reach the edge of the Wolfswood.

He presses on, head down, hood up, ignoring the dull ache that has spread through his leg.

A damned foolish idea this was, he thinks, just as he passes through into the wide clearing that stretches between the wood and the Hunter’s Gate.

Sandor is wet and heavy with snow, his leg aches with the cold and by gods, the last few steps are painful.

Hadn’t he awoken this morning feeling quite invigorated? Hadn’t he felt strong and well and in the best shape he has been in years?

The cold presses in on him, the chill wind gusting up and under the hood of his cloak and making him shiver, and he grits his teeth against it, tightens his hand around the reins and makes the final push.

Not that this night ends here, Sandor thinks. He would return the dog to the kennels, take Driftwood to the stables, and after he had seen that the horse was well cared for, then he could see to himself.

There was still a long night ahead of him.

It is but a hundred paces to the gate and yet in the swirling storm he can hardly see it. The sun has gone down below the trees now and the sky has grown grey and dim.

And then, through the storm, he catches sight of a light at the gate, a flickering torch held high. 

Laregan is waiting for him, and he is not alone. 

The would-be squire stands with him, as though it were an expected arrangement and as Sandor approaches, they both come to him.

“What a man,” the kennel master says, “What a man you are.” 

He and Kaspar lift the dog from the saddle and onto a waiting cart and when they are done, he wheels it away into the castle.

Sandor follows, tugging at Driftwood’s reins. His leg is stiff with cold and unwilling to move now that he’s come to a standstill, and he walks slowly in the direction of the stables, Kaspar Syders at his side.

The boy stays with him until the horse is fully tended, doing such a great share of the work that they are done in no time.

Sandor only nods to him - he will thank the boy in the morning, right now he needs warmth, and rest and to get off this gods forsaken leg.

He leaves Kaspar in the stables and goes to his rooms.

Someone has been along within the last hour to light a fire, and for once he is grateful at the sight of the flickering hearth.

He is cold, and sore and wet, and so without any further hesitation, he strips himself of his wet clothes and falls naked into bed.

-

He sleeps, and he dreams.

He is running on four legs.

The breeze blows warm across his face, a salty sea air that makes his nose tingle, his feet itch for sand and water.

He runs and runs carefree, with no pain in his mind or his body.

And when he stops at the water’s edge, to feel the spray on his face and bound through the crashing waves, he remembers.

He is a man again.

And he stares down into the frothy sea at his own bare feet, large and long and familiar.

Beside them, another pair of feet appear, smaller, paler and delicate, just as a hand slips into his.

“Forgive me, I don’t mean to keep you waiting,” Sansa says. “It won’t be long now.”

-


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> mama, i'm coming home...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey lovlies! i'm back at it. my apologies for making you wait so long - in november we moved our family across the world from canada to thailand, and my muse didn't travel as well as i did. thankfully she's finally caught up with me so i'll see what i can do about getting back to updating more regularly. i miss all of your wonderful comments, your excitement for this story has been such an inspiration to me.
> 
> bear with me for what's about to come... sandor is in for another rough night <3

Sandor wakes a few hours later in the dead of night.

 

The fire in the hearth has fallen to a pile of glowing embers and the room has grown cool. He rises stiffly from his bed, his injured leg sore and uncooperative, and he goes to the fireplace to toss a few sticks onto the coals.

 

He should go back to sleep - there is no sense in being up and moving about when his body is in such need of rest, but now that he is awake, there’s something he must do.

 

By the light of the growing fire, he finds the dog’s tooth still enclosed within the pouch on his belt. It is stained with grime and blood and he takes it first to the basin to wash away the mess.

 

When he’s satisfied - when the long curved canine is clean and shining, he takes it to the window.

 

He can see little through the dark save for a few bright spots that must be torches on the wall below, and though the sky is still far too full of clouds to show any stars, to his relief he finds that it is no longer snowing.

 

Sandor flips the latch on the window and a gust of chill air enters the room, catching in his hair and turning his skin to gooseflesh. Leaning onto the windowsill, he wets his lips and whistles.

 

gen-tle-mo-ther

 

And he waits.

 

Nothing happens for a while and so he does it again, whistling into the darkness.

 

He wonders for a moment if the bird will come, it is the middle of the night after all and Astyr could be anywhere.

 

He waits only minute or two longer before she appears, landing carefully on the windowsill with a deep caw. She looks at him, the firelight catching in her beady little eyes and making them glow like pinpricks of amber. She cocks her head.

 

font-of-mer-cy

 

As she whistles, the magpie hops towards him in an expectant sort of way that says she knows exactly why he has called her here.

 

Sandor holds out his hand and opens his fist to show the tooth, white and gleaming on his palm.

 

“Take this to her for me,” he says, his voice coming low and rough, “take this to Sansa.”

 

His heart jumps half a beat as he says her name. He has not often spoken it aloud and he likes the way it feels in his mouth, the way it tastes on his tongue.

 

Astyr seems to understand him, and with a flap of her wings, she rises into the air and scoops the dog’s tooth into her clawed feet before taking off.

 

Sandor doesn’t watch her go - the night is so dark he loses sight of the magpie instantly, and so once the window is closed and latched, he goes back to bed.

 

He had been dreaming of Sansa, he is quite certain of it.

 

As soon as his head hits the pillow, his mind fills with an odd lingering closeness, as though the touch of her hand to his had been real - as though his ears truly had heard her speak across the distance that separates them.

 

And he lets himself drift into the fantasy.

 

Her soft breath at his ear, her lips on his throat, the way he would feel her gasp against his skin when he gripped her tightly, a hand on her waist, another tangled in her hair, as he found her mouth with his.

 

It won’t be long now.

 

He hears those words again inside his mind, spoken in Sansa’s sweet clear voice and the hope it brings blooms warm and wild inside his chest. 

 

He has never been the sort of man to put much weight in dreams, and he feels foolish even for thinking it. Still, he cannot bring himself to drive it away - not when it soothes some of the raw yearning in his heart.

 

Gods, let it be true, he thinks, rubbing away a twinge of pain in his thigh with the heel of his hand. Let this buggering wait be over.

 

He lets his touch wander - just a few light stroked over his groin, where his cock has grown half hard just from the thought of a few tender kisses.

 

As satisfying as it would be to work himself to blinding release, this time, he does not give in.

 

That buggering trek into the woods had weakened him more than likes to admit, and he feels much older than his thirty some years.

 

More than anything he needs to sleep - to rest and to regain some of his strength. It would do no good to have Sansa return to find him brittle and creaking like an old man.

 

All because of a damned dog, no less.

 

And what would she think of the tooth, he wonders, his mind straying unhelpfully towards doubt.

 

He has no working knowledge of the practices of courting or any notion of what sort of keepsake a knight might give to his lady. Even so, Sandor can guess with great certainty it is not something the likes of a tooth from the mouth of an injured hunting dog.

 

Would it disgust her? Would she think it too ghastly, or worse yet, perhaps it would remind her too much of the hound he had once been.

 

He feels his gut clench with apprehension.

 

He had acted on instinct alone - in the moment, it had felt like the right thing to do and yet now he cannot help but feel like a fool.

 

He tilts his head back against his pillow, eyes half closed watching the firelight flicker amber and gold over the stone.

 

Bugger it, he thinks.

 

His instinct had always served him well in the past, perhaps it would do so again.

 

-

 

It is well into mid morning when he finally rises.

 

The rest has done him good. Even so, there is a shiver in his bones and an ache in his muscles he cannot quite shake, and he takes his time to stretch it away, to wash and dress slowly, all the while keeping half an eye on the blank grey sky.

 

Sandor knows sure as anything he will not see the magpie, not so soon after sending her off in the night, and this is a good thing.

 

He would rather not see her again even if Astyr returned with another favour - the only gift he wishes for now is Sansa herself.

 

And the only thing he can do now is wait.

 

So he does, Sandor waits.

 

He goes about his day as usual, albeit at a much slower pace and he skips his practice too, takinh to the grounds instead, his boots making an uneven track in the fresh snow as he coaxes the stiffness from his bad leg.

 

He makes a wide circle of the yard, stopping a few minutes to watch the men train, barking out a few suggestions for improvement before carrying on to the kennels. 

 

Master Laregan is thoroughly pleased to see him. So too is the injured hound, who comes ambling along behind his master, tail wagging, and greets Sandor as though he were an old friend.

 

He gives Torcheart a good scratch around the ears, taking care to avoid the dog’s swollen jaw, as once again, Laregan extends his deep gratitude.

 

“And if it weren’t for you,” the old man says gravely, “he would have been torn to shreds where he lay soon as the wolves caught scent of him. Would’ve stood no chance.”

 

“Maybe so,” Sandor grunts, and Laregan goes on. He has not come for the old man’s praise and quite frankly, he feels undeserving of such admiration.

 

“As it is, he’ll live - he’ll hunt again and he’ll breed a fair few pups, too. All down to you,” Laregan says, cocking his head to look at Sandor thoughtfully. “Say, you wear no emblem - ever though of a dog for your shield?”

 

“Not a chance,” Sandor says swiftly and Laregan gives a mighty laugh.

 

“Just a thought,” he says, shaking his head. “You needn’t look so stricken. If not a dog, a wolf then? I expect Lady Stark will have you in her colours in no time.”

 

Sandor feels the corner of his mouth twitch as he looks into the old man’s shining eyes, and he tells the truth. 

 

“I will gladly take anything Lady Stark has to offer me.”

 

-

 

Sometime later, just as the late afternoon sun has all but disappeared behind the treetops and his excursion through the yard has brough thim full circle and back to the training yard, he meets Dryden Beck and a company of men, readying themselves for a trip into Wintertown for food and ale.

 

When they ask him to come along - for the life of him Sandor cannot think why - it is his immediate instinct to decline.

 

And yet, he does not - he goes, falling into step next to Dryden, and somehow, just as easily into amiable conversation.

 

The evening carries on  in much the same way and it is quite as pleasant as the last he spent with Winterfell’s swordsmen. Better even, Sandor thinks, as this time, no one has the poor sense to offer him the company of a serving girl.

 

Again, he hasn’t much to share by way of his own tales - the things he has done, well, he hardly wants to keep them for the memories, let alone retell them for anyone else’s benefit - and anyway, the others hardly seem bothered.

 

For whatever reason, his reserved manner is something of a compliment to Dryden’s boisterous story telling, especially when Sandor is ready with a good natured barb to deflate his friend’s penchant for embellishment.

 

He knows they do not yet trust him, that some of them still cannot bear to look at him any longer than they have to, but he is accepted at their table, and he will ask for no more than that.

 

Though the fire in the hearth is a roaring, crackling thing, enough to keep the occupants of the bar well warm, each time the door opens, a miserable swirl of icy air gusts through the room, carrying with it a trail of fresh powder white snow.

 

Winter be damned. He has spent far too much time in the cold as of late, and he cannot help but dread the inevitable walk back to his room within the castle walls.

 

Surely, he thinks, these Northern folk had to be mad, to choose to make their lives in such a place as this - that, or they had simply found better ways of occupying themselves during the cold.

 

The corner of his mouth twitches, as he downs the rest of his drink - he can think of a fair few things that would keep him warm through the winter months, and most of them involved himself and the little bird, skin to skin.

 

The door opens again to admit a group of five men, and the blast of air it brings sends a shiver down his spine and a twinge of pain through his bad leg.

 

They stand in the entry, stomping their boots and shaking the snow from their clothes until the innkeeper yells at them to have some sense and shut the bloody door.

 

One of them - finally - does so, just as a piece of broken crockery sails past his head and smashes against the wall.

 

They bristle at this, Sandor notes, watching the way they jump for their weapons as though it were a real threat - as though they’re the sort of men who will take any excuse for a fight.

 

Toads, he decides, passing his cup to the man across the table who is pouring from a jug of sour wine, just a bunch of buggering toads.

 

“Come off it,” the innkeeper calls out sternly. He seems a good man, and entirely unwilling to entertain that kind of nonsense in his bar.

 

Sandor takes a long pull of wine, watching as the toads file past.

 

It would do him good to learn the faces of the people around here, too - the castle folk and villagers alike, and their names too, if he can manage it - any detail that could alert him to something out of place, and allow him to make good on his word to protect her.

 

He will not fail this time.

 

What he will do on the other hand - because the truth of it is, Sansa Stark is not here and as much as he may desperately want to spend this winter night entangled naked with her under a mountain of furs, it is simply an impossibility - is take the next best thing.

 

If he cannot have her, the warmth of her heart, her body, her care, and if, as it is, there is no way in the seven fucking hells he’ll take another woman in her place, Sandor will settle for what he can have.

 

He will let the wine warm him tonight. 

  
-   
  


He has not had this much to drink since well before his time with the Brown Brothers.

Nor does he remember ever drinking in such high spirits either.

 

It had always been means to and end, a way to numb himself and keep the world - and everything about it which he hated - at bay.

 

Tonight though - tonight the wine is warmth and he means not to dull pain and misery, only to chase away the cold, and perhaps, too, a little of the loneliness as well.

 

It is well past dark when Sandor finally leaves the inn. 

 

There is a pleasant fog in his head and a comfortable heat in his chest, and though he really cannot say how much it is he has had, it is certainly more than enough not to immediately notice that he is followed.

 

They find him in a darkened passageway between two buildings.

 

He can hear them - their too heavy feet in the fresh snow, their huffed breth the creak of their cold leather, chink of mail, and he deliberately stumbles, letting himself appear more drunk than he really is.

 

Sandor leans against the timber of a nearby building to piss into the snow before reaching for the hilt of his sword under the cover of his cloak, and as he rights himself, he sways a little. This time, however, it is not for effect - he is indeed rather drunk, and more than that, it has been many years since he was last in such a state. 

 

And that is why, he reasons, ten minutes later, when he’s on the ground - his ruined cheek pressed hard onto the snowy ground, a boot in his back and a man on each of his limbs - why they even stood a chance.

 

He had gotten in a few good hits before he had fallen - one of the bastards would be eating gruel for the rest of his life with the mess Sandor had made of his jaw, and he was certain he had broken an arm, perhaps an ankle too, but they had come prepared.

 

Each wore armour far better than his own and carried short thick clubs designed for mashing flesh, and when they had descended upon him with blow after blow, paying particular attention to the old wound in his leg, it had not been long before he had dropped.

 

Sandor curses as the man - the slimy cunt of a toad - on his back pulls on his hair, lifting his face just out of the snow.

 

“Couldn’t leave well alone, could you?” he sneers, and as Sandor struggles, another of the toads gives him a hard kick in the ribs. “It were none of your business, and you had to go and stick your ugly face in it anyhow.”

 

“This is about that dog?” Sandor says, understanding coming to him swiftly.

 

They weren’t just any old toads, they were Barrow’s men.

 

“No, this ain’t about a dog, no one cares about a bloody dog - this is about you, and your manners, and showing respect where respect is due.”

 

“Fuck your manners,” Sandor growls, making another attempt to throw the men off his body.

 

The last thing he hears is laughter, and then the world goes black.   
  
-

 

When he wakes it is still dark.

 

Not quite pitch black - no, there is far too much snow, on the ground, in the air, in the sky, and he finds as he hoists himself up onto one elbow, that he can see his own hand, a darker shade of dark against the snow.

 

And fuck if he had though he had been cold before.

 

As soon as the realisation comes to him, the sensation follows, spiking numb and painful through his limbs.

 

He pulls in a breath only to that his chest heaves with the effort, his body suddenly shivering beyond his control.

 

How long had he lain out here?

 

Surely not long? An hour or two in the elements and a man could freeze to death. 

 

There is no way to tell - but it can’t have been long, even if it feels like hours.

 

And it feels as though he was well on his way to freezing solid.

 

Sandor takes another shuddering breath and pushes himself to his knees. He shoves his raw aching fingers under his arms and blinks hard, crusted snow falling from his lashes.

 

He can see nothing of note. Nothing but the dark outline of trees, the flat white stretch of snow.

 

There is nothing.

 

There is no immediate sign of Wintertown or the castle itself - that would mean he was… in the wood to the south? No, the west of Winterfell?

 

His head is still fuzzy from the drink and the heavy blow he had received, and for the moment, he cannot put the pieces together. 

 

They must have dragged him.

 

Knocked him out and dragged him where…

 

With the constan fall of snow, any path they might have made had been long since covered and without lights to guide him back, or any means of getting his bearings, there is no telling what direction to go.

 

Because he must - he knows, he must go - he has no choice, he must take what little strength he has left and move.

 

And so he does.

 

Sandor hauls himself to his feel and takes a series of unstead steps towards the relative cover of a cluster of tall thin pines - and yet before he can make it, his leg gives way and he falls.

 

His body is shaking again before he hits the ground and he wonders, quite suddenly and quite without meaning to, just how long it will take for him to die.

 

He has failed her again - and he has come all this way for nothing.

 

If only he had not stupidly weakened himself going into the woods after that hound, if only he had been better prepared for this cold, if only he had kept his wits about him and stayed sober as was his custom these days.

 

Now he was nothing more than another half dead dog in the snow, only this time, no one cared enough to bring him home.

 

If only, he thinks sourly, as he makes another effort to right himself on trembling limbs, if only he had just seen her face one more time.

 

Sandor collapses into the snow, his scarred cheek barely feeling the cold, even as the rest of his body aches with it and he closes his eyes. 

Just another half dead dog in the snow.

 

But no.

 

That isn’t right, Sandor thinks, his head suddenly swimming with realisation - he made a deal.

 

He’s never asked the Gods for anything, he’s never believed in them enough to want to try - never, not until days ago, when he had lit a candle for the stranger and asked for one thing.

 

Spare my soul, he had said, until I may see her one more time.

 

Sandor lifts his head from the snow, laying it heavily on one arm.

 

And it is then, he knows that he will live.

 

Just this once, he will believe - he will believe in a foolish prayer, a promise, a lover’s song - he will believe in her.

 

Sandor doesn’t know why he does it - only that, in this moment, there is simply nothing else he can do, and so, as his body shudders and his limbs shake, he wets his lips and whistles.

 

gen-tle-mo-ther

 

It takes several tries before the song is audible, even to his own ears, and even though he knows it is foolish to try, at the same time, he knows he must.

 

He had sent Astyr away early that very morning - the bird could be anywhere and there is no reason, no physical possibility that she will hear him, nothing but his own belief that she must.

 

He pulls himself to his knees and searches the ground nearby, taking a fallen branch from a pile of snow covered leaves. It is sturdy enough to support his weight when he rises to his feet, and when he takes a few heavy steps, he finds that it holds.

 

gen-tle-mo-ther

 

Sandor does not stop the movement of his feet, setting off merely in the path that presents the least amount of resistance, and as his body carries him forward, his breath carries the magpie’s tune.

 

He walks, and walks, blindly into the dark wood and at first, when he hears her - the gentle sweet notes of her reply, he thinks it must be his own imagination.

 

Because it cannot be possible - how can it be possible?

 

But when the bird lands on his shoulder, he feels her weight, hears the sharp almost fearful caw in his ear, and he knows that the impossible has come to be.

 

“Take me home, Astyr” he says, his voice barely more than a gravelly rasp, “take me home.”

 

-

  
  
  
  
  
  



	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here we go... <3

In hindsight, perhaps it might have been a mistake to put his life in the hands of a bird.

 

Sandor knows there’s something special about her - how could there not be, with that strange, mysterious connection she seems to share between Sansa and himself, but he cannot help but wonder just how much Astyr is capable of.

 

Enough to see him through the storm and back to Winterfell?

 

It certainly does not seem so. As far as he can tell, his eyes half closed in frozen exhaustion, they seem to be heading further into the woods. The trees have grown larger, the space between them greater too and though this means the ground has become easier to cover, it takes all of his will to carry on.

 

He stumbles over his own feet, and as he pulls himself forward with the aide of the fallen branch, the magpie swoops low over his head, whistling the Mother’s hymn as if to carry him onward, reassuring him with her presence.

 

Astyr tugs at his cloak, pecks at him with her sharp little beak, directing him in any way she can to keep moving.

 

And he does - as best as he can, until he is all but shuffling, his injured leg so stiff and solid it feels like dragging a block of ice. 

 

He is tired, so very tired - what bliss would it be to simply lay down in the snow and go to sleep?

 

Sandor sways on his feet, and the magpie caws sharp and shrill in his ear.

 

He stumbles again, and then drops, the broken branch snapping under his weight, and he stays there, staring blindly into the dark.

 

Astyr caws again from somewhere overhead, and again and again and then - perhaps he really has fallen asleep, because through the crust of his frosted lashes, he sees torchlight flickering through the trees.

 

He can hear voices, shouting - searching, calling out, and then… his name, clear and unmistakable.

 

He is found.

 

\- 

 

Sandor is dreaming.

 

He must be - because she is there.

 

He has dreamt of her so often - even more so, over the last few months.

 

Sansa has come to him in nearly every way he can imagine - vengeful and irate, weak and fearful, merciful and sweet, passionate and loving and he has held her, felt the ghost of her touch and surrendered himself a thousand times over.

 

He has always been hers, and in his dreams, sometimes she is his too.

 

And she has come to him again.

 

Sansa is there, her soft body is curled around his side, tucked under the crook of his arm and her head rests upon his bare chest, ear flat against his heart.

 

Just as she’s meant to be, he thinks, making to draw himself closer and press his face into the glowing copper of her hair.

 

And yet as he tries to lay his hands on her, to lean into her honey warm scent and pull her closer still, Sandor finds that he cannot.

 

His body is a dead weight made of stone, heavy and unyielding, and so he tries his voice instead.

 

“If you… if you love me,” he says in a rough whisper, the words coming to him from somewhere far away, the carved face of a heart tree flashing before his mind’s eye, “come and find me.”

 

Sansa stirs then, lifting her head to met his eye and at first, he is sorry to have disturbed her, but then, when she looks at him, face so open, hopeful, and so achingly full of care - he cares not for anything else in the world   
  
“I did you see,” she says, “I found you, and you have found me too.”   
  
-   
  


The dreams come and go, and in them, Sansa is never out of reach.

 

He fades in and out, between empty blackness, flickering amber torchlight, and the intangible spaces in between and in them, she is always there, her clear voice gentle in his ears.

 

She talks to him - though about what he isn’t rightly sure, and for now, it doesn’t matter, he would let himself sleep away an age if it meant he could keep her by his side.

 

She leans over him, haloed in golden light and presses warm furs onto his skin, her soft hands trailing over his body - and gods, oh how he wants her.

 

If only he could shake the lead weight from his limbs, he would have her - he would take her, he would keep her for his own.

 

Despite the great depth of his want - even though it seems to burn him from the inside out, it is not enough to melt the heavy ice that traps him to his makeshift bed. He cannot reach her, nor can he seem to find his voice. 

 

His body has abandoned him - and soon, his mind does too, slipping away into black.

 

He dreams of nothing at all.   
  
-   
  


Next when he opens his eyes, Sandor knows, this time he truly has woken.

 

Sansa is not there.

 

In her place is an old woman dressed in roughly sewn pelts. Her hair is matted and white, as is one of her eyes, glossy and blind, and she reaches for him, takes his hand in one of her own, thin and bony.

 

He shudders to think it, but it occurs to him he might have imagined this crone to be his little bird all along.

 

Sandor blinks slowly, letting his surroundings swim into focus and his head pounds with the effort.

 

The woman is inspecting his fingers, pinching each one at the tip before moving down his body to do the same to his toes.

 

“Hmm,” she muses, as if surprised. “Lucky, lucky.”

 

“What?” he grunts, foot twitching as her fingers run the length of his sole.

 

Her wiry brows raise and she meets his eye.

 

“Frost didn’t get you,” she says, her hands leaving him. “Have you any pain?”

 

It takes him half a second to decide what to say - he is not one who is prone to exaggeration and yet he feels as though he has been dragged through the seven hells and back but that is, he thinks, to be expected after the last few days.

 

“Some,” he admits sourly, rubbing away the pressure behind his eyes.

 

With each breath there is a jab to his ribs, and his body bears a host of bluish bruises yet there is nothing that feels as though it has been irreparably damaged - except his leg perhaps, and that is nothing new. There is pain, certainly but what he feels is far overshadowed by the fact that he is finally out of the cold.

 

“Can you sit?” she asks, and Sandor complies, raising himself first onto his elbows and then slowly upright.

 

His head spins with the change in position, and the pounding behind his eyes starts anew. His belly churns and he blinks hard as the room blurs in and out of focus.

 

It is not a room exactly, he decides, as soon as his vision clears. It appears to be some kind of tent, tall enough for the average man to stand near straight and wide enough to accommodate a rustic sort of bed at one side. The structure is made from smooth cut branches and animal skins, roughly circular in shape with a low fire burning at the centre, the smoke curling up through an open hole in the roof.

 

The old woman turns her back on him then and busies herself by the fire, and when she is done there is a clay cup in her hand, full of something steamy and smelling of herbs.

 

“That’ll see to your head,” she says, pressing it into his hands, “and your gut.” 

 

The scent is earthy and soothing and he takes it from her, bringing it to his nose and inhaling deeply. 

 

“Where am I?” Sandor asks suddenly suspicious. 

 

This is no village hut - nor does it appear to be anything the likes of a soldier’s lodging. It is far too crude… far too  _ wild _ .

 

“Camp,” the woman says unhelpfully, and his jaw tightens. “Drink up.”

 

“Whose camp?”

 

At this, the woman chuckles, revealing more than a few missing teeth.

 

“The Wolfmother’s, that’s who.”

 

-

 

It is rather a good thing, Sandor thinks, that he has had the benefit these last years of the Brown Brother’s council - that he has lived by the sea long enough to close his eyes and clear his mind to nothing but rolling grey water and endless blue sky.

 

It is truly a gift, that somewhere within him, he has learned to find peace.

 

Yet even so, the wait is agonising.

 

The old woman’s brew had done well to settle his stomach, and a little of the pain in his head had quite thankfully lessened as well. 

 

When he had downed the lot of it, she had pressed a bundle of cloth into his lap - a shirt and leather breeches in much the same style as her own and had left the tent to allow him to wash and dress and see to the needs of his body.

 

It had taken him rather a long time to negotiate his stiff limbs into the clothing, the top fitting tight across his shoulders and the bottoms rather short in the leg, and when he had finished, he had done as best he could in the limited space to stretch away a little of his discomfort.

 

His knuckles were bruised and bloodied, as was his face too but there was nothing to be done about that - if there had been any hope in presenting himself in good condition, it was long gone.

 

No, when the time came, he would appear no more than the wreck he truly was and as much as that had troubled him - it was at least, the truth. 

 

There was barely enough room in the tent for him to stand and after a mere minute of awkwardly hunching like some sort of goon, Sandor had returned to his makeshift bed on the tent floor, pulling up a lumpy sack behind him for support.

 

If he could make no improvements upon the condition of his appearance, at least he could ensure that she found him in a somewhat dignified manner.

 

And so he had sat, and he had waited for her - the Wolfmother, Mother in the North, Queen of Ice and Snow, for Sansa.

 

Sandor had laughed to himself.

 

What a long way she had come, his little bird.

 

What a journey it had been for both of them, and here had come the end - or was it the beginning? He had thought, as a flurry of motion caught his eye.

 

The tent flap had opened, bringing with it streaming daylight, a flutter of snow and - 

 

And her.

 

-

 

His first inclination, and it is, Sandor will admit, a rather foolish one, is to kneel.

 

He does not.

 

The world feels as though it has tipped and overturned. His heart trips and thuds into his throat, and he swallows it down.

 

She is here.

 

She is as vibrant and wondrous as any of his most detailed fantasies, only somehow Sansa is more - she is real.

 

The flap closes behind her, and she stills in the mouth of the tent, wide eyed like a doe, her face framed in fox fur, white as the snow outside and she looks at him.

 

For a moment neither of them speak, they do not move - they do nothing at all.

 

And then, just as he has begun to think he might simply lose his mind from the strain of it, blessed be the buggering gods, she smiles.

 

It’s hardly anything - just a shy little curl of her pretty lips, but he is awestruck all the same.

 

There is no scorn or accusation, there is no fear.

 

Her eyes light with relief, and dare he say it, joy - and it is wonderful, it is for him.

 

“So the Wildlings call you Wolfmother,” he says, finding his voice, albeit rough and raspy as it is.

 

“They do,” Sansa says, drawing back her hood. Her hair tumbles free around her shoulders, and she begins to work at the fastenings of her cloak. “I have answered to so many names these last few years, what is one more?”

 

Sandor nods, there is something heavy and tangible hanging in the air between them. It is a gap that begs to be closed and he can feel the pull of it.

 

He does not move.

 

“And which of them shall I use?”

 

Sansa looks away, slipping the heavy cloak from her shoulders and folds it neatly, draping it over one arm. With only a few steps, she crosses the tent stopping just out of reach at his side. 

 

“M’lady?” he suggests, the corner of his mouth twitching. “My queen?”

 

Sansa shakes her head.

 

“No,” she says, “that won’t do.”

 

“Surely not Mother.”

 

“No, not that either.”

 

“Then what?” he asks, sitting up a little straighter.

 

He raises a hand then, holding it up into the space between them like an old beggar, and he waits.

 

“I think” Sansa says, as she takes it, her slender fingers soft against his palm, “that I should like to hear you call me little bird.”

 

-

 

As it happens, Sansa has brought with her food and drink, and when she consents to sit at his side, he accepts it with gratitude.

 

“I’m afraid I do not know where to start,” she admits, shaking her head as he offers her a handful of crowberries. “There is rather a lot, you see, as I am sure you have questions of your own.”

 

He does, certainly, there is no doubt about that and if she does not know where to begin then he will.

 

“What happened here last night” he asks, “I remember so little of it beyond dreaming.”

 

“Are you quite certain they were dreams?”

 

Sandor looks at her sharply, his dark brows knitting.

 

“Were they not?”

 

Sansa shakes her head, and there is something mysterious in her gaze - a little flicker he cannot quite place that twists at his gut.

 

“I do not know for certain - perhaps we should begin with something more simple,” she suggests, “can you tell me how you came to be here?”

 

Sandor grunts a laugh.

 

“I was going to ask you the same thing.”

 

“Do you not know?”

 

“I know that I was all but dead and the magpie found me just in time.”

 

Sansa smiles.

 

“Yes, she is rather good at that. Did you call for her?”

 

“I did,” he says, remembering with a shudder the hopelessness he had felt, lost and frozen and alone. “I asked her to take me home.”

 

Sansa’s face flushes pink as the meaning behind his words falls heavily between them.

 

“Oh,” she says, “and did she succeed?”

 

“I think she did.”

 

He had heard it somewhere - in a song about fools and lovers and things he hadn’t the need nor want to pay any mind to at the time - that a man’s home could be found not only within walls made of stone, but wherever he placed his heart.

 

And he had never, until now, believed a word of it.

 

Sandor carries on with his meal in thoughtful silence. They are no longer touching, and it feels to him like such a waste of his hands to eat and drink when he could use them to touch and to feel and to know her.

 

He can feel her watching him, see the way she strokes at the fur on her cloak across her lap, as though her hands have grown mutinous and demanding as well.

 

“How did you find me?” he asks finally, and Sansa lets out a little breath of a laugh as though she is relieved to be talking again.

 

“It was not me that found you, it was Astyr.”

 

“How?” he repeats.

 

Sansa settles herself more comfortably - a little of the space between them disappearing and a look of concentration appears on her face.

 

“It is a funny thing how it happened - between Astyr and I that is, I felt a connection with her from the moment I found her, though I hardly knew at the time how much it would grow. She was, and still is, my greatest companion.”

 

“A pretty talking bird,” he says, his voice low and gravelly and she smiles.

 

“Indeed,” she says, “Magpies are such clever things. I would sing to her, and quite of her own accord, Astyr learned my songs, repeating them back to me in her own voice. It became a way for us to call to each other, even from great distances.”

  
“The Mother’s hymn?”

 

“Yes, and others too,” she tells him, “though I chose that particular song with the intent to catch your ear.”

 

“Mmm,” he rumbles, and he looks away, down to where his hands rest in his lap.

 

The Mother’s Hymn had certainly done as Sansa had intended. With a few simple notes it had brought the memory of the Blackwater to the forefront of his mind.

 

Though neither of them say it, he knows she is thinking of it too.

 

The last time they had seen each other, these hands - large and rough and scarred, knuckles bruised and bloodied - had held a knife to her throat.

 

“After you left that night, I thought of you so often. ” Sansa says gently, reaching for him to slip one of her small pale hands into his own. “Even when I had learned of your death, I thought of you no less.”

 

He raises his head then, and finds her gaze - clear and blue and honest and though there is no reprimand, no resentment, no malice, it troubles him still.

 

Why, he wonders - why?

 

Sandor bites his tongue, and lets her speak.

 

“I cannot begin to know how the connection was forged between us, but I believe Astyr has always been able to sense the things that dwell upon my mind,” she continues, “after she had lived at my side for some time, I began to have the most fantastical dreams. Some evenings, when I lay sleeping, I would dream as though from her eyes - as though I could fly. It was as though, within sleep, I could share her mind. ”

 

Sansa laughs to herself as though the sound of her words is absurd even to her own ears and she lets her fingers wander across his hand, swirling over his calloused palm

 

“I could never predict when it would happen, nor could I control what it was that I saw or where she took me, but nevertheless I began to try and one day, I simply asked her to see the place where you were buried.”

 

He feels his next breath catch in his throat and his jaw tightens - he knows, without knowing how, exactly what she will say next.

 

“It did not happen right away - I still cannot control when the dreams come to me, but eventually it did. I dreamt of a rolling grey sea, a long sandy beach edged in dry swaying grass and a hillside dotted with graves. I had expected a mound of earth, perhaps even a simple marker but -”

 

“But you saw me,” Sandor finishes, voice tight.

 

He catches her fingers within his own and holds her still a moment, rubbing his thumb over her smooth unblemished knuckles.

 

Sansa nods.

 

“I saw you exactly as I remembered you - though in a proctor’s robes, a limp in your step, digging one of the very graves in which I thought you rested. You lived - and my heart sang,” she says, “and perhaps it was selfish of me, but as soon as I saw you, I knew I had to bring you here.”

 

This time, when the question forms in his mouth, Sandor allows it - he cannot hold it back.

 

“Why?” he says, far more harshly than he means to.

 

“I couldn’t not.”

 

“But you owed me nothing,” he argues, pulling back and suddenly tense.

 

“Would you rather I had left you there?”

 

“No -” 

 

“Then -”

 

“But why?” he demands, and before he can stop himself the words come tumbling forth, spilling hot and ragged from that shadowy place of shame deep within him. “Why - when I had treated you so poorly. I threatened you, I frightened you - and it was no accident. Why, when I forced myself upon you? Why not wish me dead?”

 

His voice chokes and cuts short, and when he blinks, he finds his eyes are wet.

 

Sansa does not look away and he swallows hard, collecting himself and any semblance of dignity he might still possess.

 

“I happen to know the answer to that,” she says after a moment, and there is a faint unexpected smile on her lips, “because it is something that took me many years to understand myself. It is true, you remained with me and I thought of you - I dreamt of you and I prayed for you - but my memories were never coloured with fear or hatred. Whatever passed between us, the fact remains - you are the only one who has ever told me the truth.”

 

“No,” she says, hushing him as he makes to argue again. “When I was young and foolish, with a head full of sense I did not care enough to put to use, you were the only one who cared enough to open my eyes to the way things really were.”

 

“Horse shit,” Sandor grunts, gritting his teeth. No matter how he wants to believe, it feels like madness ringing in his ears. “There were others - your father -“

 

“Was a good man who wanted as much for me to see the truth as he wanted to protect me from it,” she says and though her voice is calm and unwavering, her eyes hold nothing but sadness and regret.

 

“And yet we both failed.”

 

“No, do you not see?” Sansa argues - her face is a serene mask, untouched beyond that poignant brightness in her eyes and he knows it is one she has worn for some time. “He gave everything to protect me, and that was his choice to make. You chose your own way, harsh as it was, and it allowed me to find my own strength - to forge my own freedom.”

 

His chest feels tight and constricted, his throat growing thick.

 

“That does not erase the wrong I have done.”

 

“No,” she agrees, looking hard into his face. “I do not expect it, nor do I need it to. And at the same time, it does not place you beyond the capability of my forgiveness.”

 

“I do not deserve -”

 

Sansa silences him with a squeeze of her hand, her voice cutting calm and clear through his protest.

 

“That is not for you to decide.”

 

Sandor swallows hard, swiping a hand roughly across his face and blinks away hot tears.

 

No matter what he may think of himself, she is right - the choice is Sansa’s alone and he will not take that from her. 

 

They pass a moment in silence, neither letting go of the other’s hand and he bows his head, caving under the sheer weight of her mercy. The length of his hair falls forward, concealing his face and he takes a ragged breath.

 

He had known this was coming.

 

Sandor had known sooner or later - when he had finally found his way back to her, she would cut him straight to the core.

 

And it hurts, just as he had known it would.

 

“I have always seen you for what you are, the good and the bad of it, even well before I knew what it was I was looking at,” she says, and he stares at her and - oh, she is so beautiful.

 

Her face bears nothing but grace - there is sadness in her bright blue eyes but hope and kindness too, absolution on her pretty mouth.

 

He wants it all.

 

Deserving or not, be damned - hadn’t he promised himself that he would accept whatever it was she had to offer? No matter what it was?

 

His heart thuds hard against his ribs.

 

He is raw and wretched, and he does not hide.

 

And she sees him - for all that he is.

 

-

  
  
  



	9. Chapter 9

It is upon instinct alone that he acts.

 

He has no voice to ask for what he needs now - even if he had, he doubts the words would come to him.

 

And so, with hands that feel brutish and clumsy, Sandor reaches for her.

 

He cannot bear the weight of her gaze any longer. He cannot stand the empty space between them, and even though the motion is entirely unfamiliar, he closes his arms around her, drawing her hard against his chest.

 

For all that he has not said, Sansa seems to understand him anyway.

 

Her hands, small and gentle on his shoulder, on his back, feel like a soothing balm. It is as though through the tips of her fingers she possesses the means to heal all that ails him, and he cannot choke back the sudden harsh breath that constricts his lungs.

 

He has never before, not in his own living memory, been handled with such care and it is somehow both terrifying and wondrous all at once.

 

With his thick arm wrapped around her, Sandor can feel the bunch of wool under his hands, her body whole and living underneath. Sansa breathes, her heart beats, she smells of herbs and honey and woodsmoke, and she is real.

 

He tilts his head, pressing his nose into her hair, and he inhales. This is the scent of home, he thinks, of comfort, and he can scarcely ask for more.

 

“There was so much I wanted for you,” he tells her, half whispered against the soft skin of her throat.

 

He can feel the short nod of her head, the slip of her hand as it moves up over his shoulder to rest at the base of his skull and into his hair, leaving a soothing trail over the back of his head.

 

“And instead, I frightened you, I hurt you - I failed to protect you, and for that I will always be sorry.”

 

“We both know you would not have known how to do anything else.”

 

“That is no excuse,” he says, pulling back to look her in the eye.

 

“I saw you then - with so much pain and rage and passion. You could not have helped me any more than you did when you could hardly help yourself.”

 

Something about her words smarts like salt in a wound. She is right, and somehow it makes it worse.

 

Had he known how - he would have kept her safe, he would have set her free, he would have given her everything.

 

“I saw what you were then, and I see you now too.”

 

Sandor gives a humourless laugh.

 

“I will never claim to be a good man, but I am a far better one than I once was.”

 

“I know,” she says, smiling softly. “When I dreamed of you - when I saw you on that lonely hillside, a monk with a gravedigger’s spade, I saw you at peace, and that is all that I had hoped for you.”

 

Her hand slips from the back of his head to rest on his cheek, and then her fingertips brush gently over the scarred and twisted flesh, he does not flinch.

 

“I do not regret a moment that has passed between us, and neither should you,” Sansa says, and though her voice is resolute, he can hardly bring himself to believe it.

 

A guilty man is a guilty man, forgiven or not, his crimes are never truly erased.

 

“Shouldn’t I?”

 

“No. I have no need of your guilt and neither do you. It will bring you no protection and it will give you no strength. If you cannot let it go, it will be nothing more than a barrier to living as a better man.”

 

And again, she is right, of course, he knows she is right. If only it were not a thing so much easier said than done.

 

Half a beat later he decides he does not care. For her, he will try and if he can split his chest, crack his ribs and bare the bloody mess that is his untested heart - if he can learn to accept her forgiveness, he can learn to shed his guilt too.

 

“It is not much that I ask, only that I do not want you to look at me with regret. When you look at me, let it be with hope for the future we might share, not with guilt for all that you did or did not do in the past.”

 

As the path of her fingers drifts from his cheek to ghost over his lips, Sandor catches her hand and holds it there, looking hard into her face.

 

She is remarkable, his little bird, so finely made, so beautiful. She is brave and she is wise - and her heart, good Gods, how had it survived such cruelty, so much loss and remained so gracious, so hopeful and pure?

 

Sandor feels his own heart swell against his battered ribs and he thinks of kissing her.

 

The unbidden urge rises hot under his skin and he aches to have her. He cannot wait to taste her, to feel the clutch of her body and to hold her skin to skin.

 

“I haven’t much to offer you,” he tells her. His ruined mouth moves over her fingertips with each word and Sansa sighs, her eyes falling closed.

 

“You have more to offer than you realize,” she says softly.

 

“I have a sword, and some strength, a few good years of service, sharp mind and fair body -“

 

“And what of your heart?”

 

Sandor swallows hard.

 

“In time,” he says and he answers honestly - he cannot, he will not lie to her. He does not love her, but he knows with glowing certainty, all to soon, he will. “In time, without a doubt.”

 

Her shoulders rise and fall as she releases a shaky breath, and in that moment he is stunned.

 

He can see anticipation in every line of her delicate body and it seems such a wonder that a woman so fine, so beautiful, so poised and capable, should find joy in the promise of his callow heart.

 

“Sansa,” he says carefully, his voice low, “look at me.”

 

And when she does, he cannot stop himself any longer.

 

Her eyes are an endless blue sky, wide and bright and within them there is hope and joy and desire.

 

He cradles her jaw, swiping the pad of his thumb over her smooth cheek and tips her chin upwards, pulls her closer and then - then he is kissing her.

 

And in truth, it is not quite a kiss at first, just a brush of skin, hot breath mingling in the air between them. It is only the barest hint of sensation and yet it is enough to send his heart racing.

 

A little sound escapes her, as though she is thrilled and contented all at once and he chases it down with a second, firmer press of his mouth.

 

He feels no need to rush, no urgency to take more than the sweetness of this moment. It is new and fragile, this thing they have forged between them and he will not take too much too soon for fear of crushing it to dust in his blundering hands.

 

He will not push her too far.

 

His desire for her can wait, preferably until a time when he is not feeling the affects of fighting and drinking and a night in the northern wilds - this kiss, this is enough for now.

 

And yet somehow, despite his restraint, it becomes more.

 

Sansa parts her lips and presses back. She is warm and soft and wet, and with little more than his instinct to guide him, he begins to tease and taste her until they are both breathless.

 

And when she pulls away, her hand curling tight into his hair, he can feel her smile.

 

“You really must rest,” she tells him, and as much as he knows she is right, he cannot let her go just yet.

 

“Will you stay a while?” He asks, obediently settling himself back into the bed of furs.

 

“Alright,” she says, “I shall tell you a story to help you sleep.”

 

He frowns, he is no child, no more is she his mother but before he has a chance to argue this point, she shakes her head, a sweet smile curling her pretty mouth.

 

“You will like it, I promise.”

 

Sandor grunts his assent, he has no heart to argue - especially not when her hand is sliding soothingly over his chest and down his arm. She locks her fingers within his and begins.

 

“I once dreamed of a great forest, old and wild, made of fir and yew and aspen, and I walked barefoot through moss and dry leaves, the sun on my face and the wind in my hair. I walked and walked until I came upon a lone weirwood - a heart tree - and when I knelt at it’s foot to pray, it spoke to me in a voice I had not heard in many years.”

 

He lets a heavy breath escape him and his eyes fall closed as her voice washes over him.

 

Had he not dreamt of something similar not that long ago?

 

“What did it say?” He asks - he can guess already to whom the tree’s voice belonged.

 

“The one you are looking for is brave, it said, he is gentle, he is strong, settle for no less. The tree began to weep, a bright red stain flowing from it’s hollow eyes and I felt myself crying too. How, I asked it - but how will I know? And it answered me. You know him already. And again I asked how - how will I find him? And the heart tree said, when he is ready he will show himself, set a path and he will follow at any cost.”

 

He feels his heart pick up half a beat, skipping into his throat - yes, he thinks, he knows this dream.

 

“I rose to my feet, the wind suddenly strong, sending a litter of dancing red leaves through the air. Somewhere far away I could see a dark shape through the trees but I was not frightened. I did not fear him as he came closer to me. I got to my feet, I beckoned to him, skipping away into the wood, and as I did, I called to him, my words coming to me without thought and leaving my throat like a ribbon of golden firelight.”

 

Sandor opens his eyes then, just a sliver and he looks at her. He waits.

 

“And do you know what I said?”

 

“Yes,” he nods, but he does not repeat the words.

 

_ If you love me... _

 

Sansa smiles, a touch of pink warming her cheeks.

 

“I had wondered how often we had crossed paths within our own dreams,” she says, her fingers stroking over the palm of his hand. 

 

“More than once, I’d wager,” he agrees. “I always saw you as you are, not as the girl I remembered you.”

 

“Yes,” she says, as she holds his gaze, “there were some dreams that we shared that were not meant for a child.”

 

The meaning of her words is as plain as the smile she wears, the sparkle in her eyes, and yet it trips and stumbles through his mind like the wildest nonsense.

 

For a moment, he does nothing.

 

Sandor stares at her, swallowing back the sudden swoop and dive in his gut. 

 

He had dreamed more than once of fucking her - dreams that had been thrilling and erotic, tender and sweet, that had left him aching with want. He had dreamed of taking her, of having her, of feeling her open and willing and wanting. 

 

He could have never imagined that Sansa had, at least in some part, seen it too - that her desire had not merely been a wishful invention of his own mind. 

 

He lets loose his breath and he speaks. 

 

“Hmm,” he muses, the noise rising like a growl, “and if I said that I had forgotten them?”

 

Her smile does not falter, nor does she look away - she knows he is teasing her. 

 

“I would say it was a great shame, but of no real consequence. There are far better memories to be made during waking hours.”

 

She pulls her lip between her teeth, smile suddenly shy, and Sandor feels his belly clench, hot and tight.

 

Oh, how he wants her.

 

He wants so much.

 

“Sansa,” he starts, and then, “little bird -“

 

“You must rest,” she tells him, “soon we will have all the time in the world.”

 

-

 

His nap had been neither lengthy nor restful.    
  
Sansa had stayed by his side until he had fallen asleep. They had spoken no more of the dreams they had shared and though he had been sorely tempted to lay her down upon his bed of furs, do away with patience and good sense, and explore her with each one of his hungered senses, he had restrained himself.   
  
He had slept, and when he had woken again, the tent had been empty.

 

He had lain still for perhaps a whole quarter of an hour, rubbing the pain away from his injured thigh and as he did so, he had listened with some curiosity to the noise of the camp outside.

 

He could not begin to guess what it meant to be a guest of the Wolfmother - he knew so little of these people and their custom, and what he had heard was neither informative nor complementary.

 

He had heard the wildlings were an unruly savage lot who knelt to no man below the wall. That their men were fierce and their women even more so. That they were lawless, crude and violent.

 

And true or not, he would soon see for himself.

 

He had wondered then, not for the first time, how Sansa come to be here. 

 

Even after the hours they had spent inside her tent - after all they had talked about, they had only just begun to assemble the pieces of their scattered stories. And what they had discussed had been perhaps some of the most difficult of it all.   
  
They hadn’t started simply, no, they had cut straight to the heart of it, and matters of happenstance and logistics had been left for another time.

 

With some of the worst of it now out in the open, Sandor could only hope it would become easier.   
  
He had thrown himself at her feet, bruised and bloody, guilty and ashamed, and though he’d had no expectation of her generosity - he could scarcely say he deserved it - Sansa had no intention of keeping him there. Just as she had tended to his body, she would see that he had all he needed - comfort, safety, hope and truth - to mend all else.   
  
There was still so much more to learn and so many more questions to answer, and they would find their way together.    
  
In the place where Sansa had knelt by his side, he had found a stack of neatly folded clothing. His own cloak and boots were now clean and dry, and he had put them on along with a number of borrowed items - layers for warmth, thick socks and a shaggy old bear pelt, bald in some places but still more than good enough to throw over his shoulders.   


 

Outside the tent, the cold clean air is both harsh and invigorating with, and it is a welcome change from the musty smoke within.   
  
It is late afternoon, early evening perhaps, and he looks up at the sky, standing for a moment just beyond the mouth of the tent. He cannot be sure how much time had passed as he had lain half dead and shut away from the world.

 

And however long it was, Sandor has had enough.    
  


The tent is perhaps a hundred paces from a small clearing and throughout the surrounding woods, he can see half a dozen others, in the same roundhouse style, dotted in amongst the trees where the ground lays flat and bare enough to build them.

 

At the centre of the clearing sits a large cooking fire, with a number of men and women surrounding it attending to the preparation of food. Others stand or crouch nearby, busy with their own tasks but still well within the reach of the fire’s warmth.

 

Sansa is not among them.

 

And for a moment, he stands, as still as the thick dark trunks that surround him, watching the Wildlings work with a passing interest.

 

He has little desire to join them, and even less to return to his tent, and though the quiet of the wood suits him well, he cannot stand forever where he is.

 

Sandor leaves the cover of the trees and the Wildlings spot him straight away.

 

“Come,” they shout, waving him over, “come Houndstooth, come where it is warm.”

 

He stops, shakes his head, certain he has misheard.

 

“What is that you call me?” he asks, voice hard, teeth grinding and his hand falls to his belt, reaching for the hilt of a sword that is not there.

 

He had thought after years with the Brown Brothers that he had grown accustomed to living without steel at his side, but these last few weeks have told him otherwise. He will always be a man made to fight and kill and defend, whether or not he holds a sword in his hand.

 

Some parts of him are not so easily lost and he is glad for this fact.

 

Some parts, on the other hand he can only wish were dead and buried forever.

 

“Houndstooth!” they echo, and he stares at them, something hot and uncomfortable settling in his gut.

 

“Houndstooth,” repeats one of the men, coming forward from the fire. He is short and broad with a thick beard and lined face. “The Wolfmother, she gave you no name, we had nothing else to call you.”

 

“And you thought to use that?” Sandor asks, half disgusted.

 

Years had passed and still the name would not leave him.

 

“Aye,” the man says, his brow wrinkling in confusion, “should we not? It was a fine gift, and when Arem is finished, your woman will wear it proudly.”

 

“I am nearly done,” the man called Arem says. On his lap is a spread of tools and some leather cord, and he holds between his fingers something small and white.

 

It is the very tooth he had sent in return for Sansa’s favour - the hunting dog’s tooth.

 

And Sandor nods. It is all he can do.

 

He had thought, well, he cannot say exactly what he had thought. He had seen an unwanted glimmer of his disgraceful past where there was none at all - it had been harmless.

 

He sighs, moving slowly to the overturned log where the man called Arem works, and he sits next to him, grimacing at the twinge of pain in his ribs, the stiffness in his leg. He looks for a moment into the flames, the curling grey smoke that reaches up into the blank white sky and he closes his eyes.

 

“What is that you are doing?” he asks when he opens them again. He peers into the man’s lap and Arem smiles.

 

“It is finished now, I will show you,” he says, holding out his work.

 

At the base of the tooth, the man has made a careful hole and through it, he has strung a thin strip of leather, knotted in an intricate manner. Sandor is as much an expert on jewelry and ornaments as he is on intimate gifts and romantic words, but it looks fine enough to him.

 

With the help of a craftsman’s skill, his grim attempt at returning her favour has become something beautiful.

 

“Go on,” says Arem, “have it.”

 

Sandor looks at it for a moment, swaying gently from the man’s outstretched hand.

 

“Thank you,” he says as he takes it. He closes the tooth tightly in his fist and looks away - not into the fire, but towards the woods, into the endless black and white of fir trunks and softly heaped snow.

 

Far off between the trees he can see the movement of little bodies - a small group of children searching for dry sticks for the fire, accompanied by a large dog. He can hear their high laughter, the dog’s excitable barking as it ambles through the undergrowth. 

 

The bearded man appears then, blocking his line of sight, and thrusting a steaming cup into his hands. He gives another to Arem, and takes a seat at the end of the log.

 

He tells him his name is Lorlan, and he is leader of this group, and as they sit together, the three of them, Sandor learns a great deal more.

 

They tell him that some months ago, word came to their tribe that the Lady of Winterfell, the Wolfmother as they knew her,  was in search of an orphaned child - a boy, blue eyed and kissed by fire - and she made appeal to the free folk for their help to find him.

 

“And it so happened,” Lorlan says, looking out towards the children in the woods, “I had such a boy with me, he and his guardian came to us near eight summers ago on their way to Skagos.”

 

Sandor follows the man’s eye, but from where they sit he cannot tell one tightly bundled child from another. 

 

“Since when do the wildlings help those below the wall?” 

 

“The wall?” snorts Lorlan, “where have you been man?”

 

Sandor doesn’t answer him.

 

“The wall has been as good to keep us out as my hands can hold smoke,” Arem explains “it is no more. Our people are free to come and go.”

 

“No,” Lorlan says with a rueful laugh, “we may be now, but that was not always the case. It was naught but chaos and fighting until the Wolfmother took the North. She put to right that bloody mess and made peace between the free folk and what Northern lords who thought to put us out.”

 

Sandor feels the corner of his mouth twitch, of course she did, his little bird. Had she had done what a thousand men could not and brought the wildlings to their knees?

 

Lorlan seems to hear his unspoken question and goes on.

 

“We may live as we always have done, seek trade with your people and move about these lands as we please so long as we do so in peace,” he says, “that is good enough for her and good enough for the free folk too.”

 

Sandor nods, he understands now.

 

Sansa has not forced upon them any demand of fealty, she has not tried to bend their will, change their customs or break their spirits, she has asked not asked them to kneel and by that token, they have as good as done it.

 

“She is as wise as she is lovely,” Arem says, and Sandor glares at him. “Do you disagree, Houndstooth? I’d say there’s hardly a man here who would.”   
  


“No,” Sandor grumbles, his hand gripping tighter around the favour within his closed fist, “I do not.”

 

“Half of us here had it in our minds to take her for our own,” Lorlan laughs, “even those who have wives already.”

 

The sharp point of the tooth digs into his palm and his jaw tightens.

 

“You have done well to reconsider,” he says.

 

“That is what the Wolfmother told us,” agrees Arem. “She said she had waiting at home a man twice as large and ten times as fierce as any here, and should we so much as try we would never be so sorry.”

 

Sandor gives a humourless laugh, “she was not wrong.”

 

No, he thinks, there was nothing he wouldn’t do to see her safe. Any man who thought Sansa Stark just a thing to capture and lock away, they would be sorry indeed.

 

Lorlan laughs too, but his is full of mirth and he nudges Sandor in the ribs with his elbow.

 

“Says he who nearly froze to death after one night in the woods.” 

 

“And if that did not kill me, what do you suppose will?” Sandor says, his voice rough and menacing. He looks at them unblinking. “The fire did not, and now the ice has not either - do you think yourself stronger than that?”

 

The levity slides clean from the man’s face, his mouth clamping shut and he crosses his arms. He will not say another word about it, Sandor knows, and if the rest of these men are smart, they will do well to follow his lead.

 

The silence lasts only a few minutes. Lorlan is a good natured fellow and he does not seem keen to carry any sort of ill will, and as he carries on, Sandor hardly listens. He looks down instead into his open hand at the impression the dog’s tooth has made upon his palm.

 

He has been waiting for her, not for minutes as he sits by the fire an accidental guest in a Wildling camp, and not for weeks either as he journeyed northward from the Quiet Isle, but for years - for all that lays ahead of them, they have waited years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for sticking with me. i must have written 10k words for this chapter since last updating and all of them were garbage. hope these ones were finally the right ones.


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